tag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:/rss/departments/sportsSPLICETODAY.com2017-10-13T13:51:25Ztag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/223862017-10-13T07:01:00-04:002017-10-12T17:56:26-04:00<i>New York Times</i> Op-Ed on NFL Protests Is Wrong<p>The Colin Kaepernick &ldquo;take a knee&rdquo; controversy has dragged on for over a year now, and the opinions attached make you question a lot of people&rsquo;s understanding of very basic concepts. For example, you&#39;ll see many on social media voicing their opinion that NFL players have a First Amendment right to protest during the pre-game national anthem. Do these people also think that the fellow selling you your sandpaper at Ace Hardware has a constitutional right to wear a MAGA cap because he feels obliged to protest abortion? No, they&#39;d immediately report the employee and try to get him fired. The political left is vengeful. The First Amendment applies only to governmental restrictions on free speech, not on workplace restrictions.</p>
<p>The latest in the Kaepernick controversy involves ESPN handing a two-week suspension to its on-air personality Jemele Hill after she called for football fans to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/09/espn-anchor-suspended-after-encouraging-dallas-cowboys-boycott-on-twitter.html">boycott&nbsp;Dallas Cowboys sponsors</a> after owner Jerry Jones told his players they must stand for the national anthem if they want to play in the game. <i>The</i> <i>New York Times</i> ran an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/opinion/jemele-hill-football-espn.html">op-ed</a>&nbsp;that condemns the sports network for its callous disregard for justice, but it lacked even one cogent thought.</p>
<p>Jemele Hill recently tweeted that Donald Trump is a white nationalist who surrounds himself with fellow white supremacists, putting him in the same category as a Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan or a neo-Nazi. She also claimed that he was elected because he&rsquo;s white, which doesn&#39;t even make sense. ESPN took no disciplinary action then against Hill, even though she violated corporate rules on social media behavior. On the other hand, ESPN fired Curt Schilling after he <a href="https://www.outsports.com/2016/4/19/11461618/curt-schilling-espn-transgender">tweeted</a>&nbsp;a provocative meme protesting new bathroom laws applying to transsexuals.</p>
<p>The <i>Times</i> op-ed author, Kashana Cauley, writes that ESPN &ldquo;might be scared of boycotts and that the Cowboys sponsors, as well as the network&rsquo;s own, are more important than supporting the idea that black people are people.&rdquo; This tips the reader that she&#39;s offering an emotional appeal rather than a reasoned argument. How many people actually believe that left-leaning ESPN would work against black people being viewed as human beings?</p>
<p>In the next paragraph, Cauley states that &ldquo;an obscenely large number of black people are killed or brutalized by police officers in the United States,&rdquo; and she includes a link that one would assume is going to document this with hard data, but the link was to another <i>Times</i> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/opinion/colin-kaepernick-football-protests.html">article</a>&nbsp;that offers no supporting evidence. If obscene numbers of unarmed blacks are really being killed by cops, then a publication like the<i> Times </i>owes its readers something tangible, instead of asking them to accept this as an article of faith.</p>
<p>Kaepernick started his protest in 2016, when Barack Obama was President and only <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2016/">16</a>&nbsp;unarmed black men were killed by police, meaning that <a href="http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/odds.shtml">lightning</a> was just about as likely to end their lives. Police should not be killing any unarmed people of any race, but 16 deaths in a year, out of a <a href="http://blackdemographics.com/population/black-male-statistics/">population</a>&nbsp;of 21.5 million black males, does not represent an &ldquo;obscenely large number&rdquo; of police killings, especially when looked at in the context of total police killings of unarmed people of all races.</p>
<p>As for her claim that ESPN might be afraid of boycotts, she may just be right, but the sports network is a business, not the NAACP. AT&amp;T, which is one of the Cowboys sponsors that Jemele Hill has targeted for boycott, ran <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/09/top-cowboys-advertiser-att-ran-nearly-30-ads-on-espn-just-this-weekend/">30</a>&nbsp;ads on ESPN last weekend. It&#39;s remarkable that Hill still has her job after directly attacking her employer&#39;s revenue stream so blatantly. AT&amp;T has done nothing to hurt the cause of justice for black people. Hill&rsquo;s actions are so reckless that one might be tempted to speculate that she&#39;s trying to get fired in order to become a martyr and move on to a better job. The author states that ESPN pays Hill to express her opinions, but calling for a boycott against an important sponsor is pure political activism, not the expression of an opinion.</p>
<p>Cauley then swerves into surreal territory by writing that ESPN suspended Hill to increase ratings, just like it did when it wouldn&#39;t let its Asian-American football announcer Robert Lee call a UVA football game because his name is the same as the Confederate general&rsquo;s. To claim that the network would think this would boost viewership to a local game that wasn&#39;t even broadcast nationally is ludicrous. PC-crazy ESPN had lost its marbles and was so paranoid that it thought that Lee&rsquo;s name would trigger ultra-woke football fans, so it moved him to a game far from the hotspot of the moment, Charlottesville.</p>
<p>Anyone hanging in there with this article after that nutty paragraph could only be a true believer. The writer cites a poll finding that 51 percent of Americans support the player protests, seemingly unaware that the NFL and Jerry Jones are concerned only with their customers&mdash;that sub-group of Americans that watch their games. A JD Power <a href="http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/20171611/national-anthem-protests-no-1-reason-viewers-tuned-nfl-games">poll</a>&nbsp;that&#39;s actually relevant to the topic is one that found that the anthem protests were the number one reason people stopped watching NFL games last year. These are the people who pay the massive salaries of the NFL players Jemele Hill champions.</p>
<p>Cauley, a former staff writer for <i>The Daily Show</i> with Trevor Noah, writes that she&#39;s having a hard time watching the NFL this year, partially because she&#39;s concerned it&#39;s not addressing domestic violence. Perhaps she didn&#39;t hear that the league suspended Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott this season for six games over a domestic abuse claim that police deemed unworthy of basing criminal charges on. Think of the strong&nbsp;warning message that sends to its players. This article is the perfect example of what the left does best&mdash;devour itself with purity tests. ESPN has veered way to the left, bending over backwards to cater to a certain political segment, but nothing it&#39;s done in the past will ever stop the rabid few from turning on it when it suits their purposes.</p>
Chris Becktag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/223812017-10-12T05:58:00-04:002017-10-13T09:51:25-04:00Trini-Dead<p>As a U.S. soccer nightmare unfolded on a warm October Tuesday, I asked the bartender what his headline would be in 80-point type across tabloid wood. The former draftsman from North Jersey, a man with no newspaper experience, paused while ringing up an old dude who had the nerve to order a grasshopper to go along with his wife&rsquo;s chocolate martini.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Trini-Dead&rdquo; he said, nailing it, as only he can. I wanted to run to the payphone and call it in. Instead, there are only websites now and they don&rsquo;t take calls from landlines.</p>
<p>The U.S. men&rsquo;s soccer team had just lost 2-1 to spoilers Trinidad &amp; Tobago, an unlikely result in the CONCACAF qualifying which was matched by two more unlikely results from Panama and Honduras that led to the unlikely exit of team U.S.A. from next summer&rsquo;s FIFA World Cup in Russia. I think the first site to use the &ldquo;perfect storm&rdquo; clich&eacute; was in fact the U.S. Soccer federation online presence.</p>
<p>It was fitting to witness this national sports disaster in one of the oldest inns in America, the Beekman Arms in Rhinebeck, NY. At the same bar where I saw the final Barack Obama election results for his first term sitting with the late playwright Romulus Linney, the same bar where Franklin Delano Roosevelt used to hang out on trips from nearby Hyde Park. Throw in an Aaron Burr, a George Washington, a Benedict Arnold and an Alexander Hamilton and you have the Americana pedigree of a building where I spend many an evening hour watching baseball or hockey or soccer on their understated barroom television. Hours spent at that bar have brought me conversations with right-wing jazz percussionists, audio engineer/gun nuts from Cleveland, and songwriter Chip Taylor (&ldquo;Angel of the Morning&rdquo; and &ldquo;Wild Thing&rdquo;).</p>
<p>The Beekman Arms bartender nailed the headline probably because legendary newspaper editor Horace Greeley used to enjoy drinks at the Beekman Arms and might&rsquo;ve written a few headlines there himself. One of Greeley&rsquo;s famous quotes include &ldquo;Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character.&rdquo; So true for the American soccer players, who are now more famous for losing to Trinidad than they would&rsquo;ve been for advancing to the World Cup. Perhaps they couldn&rsquo;t step up and grab the spotlight because this game was lost on the cable landscape to obscure Bein Sports. ESPN was busy with the NBA. Fox was supposed to be tied up with MLB postseason action.</p>
<p>So, ever so silently and just like that with a clink of a pewter tankard, the U.S. boys played their way out of the greatest sports tournament aside from NCAA&rsquo;s March Madness. An utterly listless first half cost them dearly, but all was well because Mexico was beating Honduras and Costa Rica had a handle on Panama. It all changed in a horrific 45 minutes of Telemundo fragmented coverage. All the final qualifiers were played at the same time to prevent any rigging. As the U.S. game kicked off, pundits reported a 93 percent chance the American squad was going to win or draw and therefore qualify for Russia next summer.</p>
<p><em>Nyet</em> to bogus U.S. coach Bruce Arena, a proven loser who was brought in with ridiculously undeserved fanfare to replace the too-efficient-but-not-emotional-enough German legend Jurgen Klinsmann after losses to Mexico and Costa Rica. Klinsmann stood his ground and did not buy into the insistence by U.S. Soccer officials to favor the fraudulent Major League Soccer with most of its players knowing it is an ersatz confederation that is a corporate tax shelter for a handful of owners providing one final paycheck for former European stars.</p>
<p>Klinsmann should have the last laugh as the U.S. Soccer Federation overloads indeed.com with job openings in the next few weeks. It&rsquo;ll be a bloodletting for the Chicago-based front office which has several &ldquo;lifers&rdquo; who seem to be operating their own fantasy version of FIFA or the highly questionable Football Association in England. Sports marketing and sponsorship losses will no doubt pile up above the transom as the cold facts of a qualifying failure set in as the rest of the major sports in the U.S. are in full swing. Having been in every World Cup since 1986, there is plenty of egg on face for the U.S. Soccer Federation as of this writing.</p>
<p>I was in Paris in 1998 when Steve Sampson&rsquo;s embarrassing squad was home before the postcards, losing to Germany and Iran and Yugoslavia. They scored only one goal, a Brian McBride tally against Iran in the closing moments of an iconic 2-1 loss that featured a lumbering Alexi Lalas, now a curmudgeonly broadcaster who will get lots of attention in the next few days wagging an &ldquo;I told you so&rdquo; finger.</p>
<p>The bottom line is next summer will now suck because the U.S. 11 couldn&rsquo;t get it together for 90 minutes on a soggy pitch in Couva, Trinidad in front of a few hundred &ldquo;Soca Warriors&rdquo; supporters. We will now join Scotland and avert our feeble eyes when the spectacle of World Cup soccer is played in Russia next June. With all the Russian connections from our current president, it&rsquo;s ironic our national team will<em> not</em> be mixing it up with the rest of the world in cities like Kalingrad, Saransk and Nizhny Novgorod. I have overinvested emotionally in this national team over the past few years and regretted not seeing them live in early September for a World Cup qualifier game in New Jersey. I regretted it until the same barroom television revealed a sleepwalking U.S. squad suffering a 2-0 home loss to Costa Rica with nary a shot on goal in the soccer-only Red Bull Arena in Harrison.</p>
<p>I&rsquo;ve spent much of the past several weeks attending college soccer matches in the Hudson Valley. The division I Marist Red Foxes, who have several players from the upstart semi-pro Kingston Stockade, have been struggling of late. The Bard College Raptors, a lowly division 3 outfit, have been losing in overtime but still improving since the passing of their coach Andy McCabe last year. I was pleased to see the Bard team wearing &ldquo;AM&rdquo; on the backs of their jerseys in honor of Andy. I am one of the few non-parents in attendance of these games, and even helped a Yonkers lady with proper directions to the Taconic Parkway after she came up to Annandale to see her son represent RPI against Bard.</p>
<p>It was a rousing match in this strange autumn heat on a day when I spotted Ric Ocasek and Wallace Shawn at the nearby Rhinecliff Amtrak station. Sometimes it&rsquo;s too much when you lose something to look forward to months down the road. The last time we sucked this bad and didn&rsquo;t make it was 1986, when only 24 teams went to Mexico for the tourney. That year is was the hosts Mexico and Canada, representing CONCACAF for crying out loud. Now there are 32 squads that will make it to Russia next June.</p>
<p>And we will not have even the slightest Russian hacker representing us.</p>
Spike Vrushotag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/223462017-10-06T07:00:00-04:002017-10-05T22:51:19-04:00The Disproportionate Cultural Impact of Tennis’ “Battle of the Sexes” <p>The story of how a 1973 exhibition match between tennis legend Billie Jean King and 55-year-old tennis hustler and former men&#39;s champion Bobby Riggs was perceived as an historical event transcending tennis was unlikely. What was essentially a sideshow&mdash;the tennis equivalent of a pro wrestling bout&mdash;morphed into an international spectacle. At this point, the event&rsquo;s huge cultural impact is mostly a faded memory, but<i> Battle of the Sexes, </i>starring Emma Stone as King and Steve Carell as Riggs, will remind generations who weren&#39;t around at the time of the match&rsquo;s indelible place in history, although it doesn&#39;t capture much of what was going on behind the scenes.</p>
<p>Ironically, the motor-mouthed Riggs, playing the male chauvinist pig/villain role to the hilt, ended up as an accidental enabler of female tennis players who were seeking financial parity with their male counterparts. When, in the course of brilliantly hyping the match, he said the &ldquo;whole women&#39;s lib thing&rdquo; had gone too far, and that soon men wouldn&#39;t even be able to stop at the bar after work anymore, both men and women perked up their ears. Due to Riggs&rsquo; masterful marketing, interest in the event grew so rapidly that it was played in the cavernous Houston Astrodome, while picking up an international television viewership of an estimated 90 million.</p>
<p>Despite all the hullabaloo, it was never destined to be much of a matchup, even though Riggs had demolished women tennis&rsquo; top ranked player, Margaret Court, 6-1, 6-2 in an earlier exhibition match. King, who had a 26-year age advantage over her colorful opponent, won 39 Grand Slam singles by the time she retired, but this was the one match she&rsquo;d be remembered for. While it&#39;s true that there was heavy pressure on King to win, Riggs, who&rsquo;d trained seriously for the Court match, <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-4000-5146-5">barely broke a sweat</a> preparing. Some believe that he <a href="http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/9589625/the-match-maker">threw&nbsp;the match</a> for money. Whatever the truth, Riggs play was spotty and uninspired in his straight sets, 0-3 loss to King.</p>
<p>Despite all the dodgy, showbiz aspects of the match, it somehow went on to became a milestone for women tennis players seeking equal pay with men. The hyperbole was over the top. John Powers, <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/09/22/552869646/battle-of-the-sexes-revisits-billie-jean-kings-historic-win-against-bobby-riggs">writing</a>&nbsp;for NPR, claimed it was &ldquo;surely the most important&rdquo; match of all time. About a match where Riggs was wheeled out in on a rickshaw pulled by sexy models he called &quot;Bobby&#39;s Bosom Buddies,&quot; revered sportswriter Frank Deford had <a href="https://www.espn.com/sportscentury/features/00016060.html">this&nbsp;to say</a> about King: &ldquo;She has prominently affected the way 50 percent of society thinks and feels about itself in the vast area of physical exercise.&rdquo; In 1990, <i>Time</i> named Billie Jean King one of the &quot;100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century.&quot;</p>
<p><i>Time</i> didn&#39;t mention Riggs&rsquo; lax training methods because that would&rsquo;ve interfered with the feel-good story. King went on to convince her fellow players to form a union, which is how the Women&#39;s Tennis Association (WTA) came about. After winning the U.S. Open in 1972 and receiving $15,000 less than men&#39;s champion Ilie Nastase, as WTA president in 1973 King demanded equal pay or she&#39;d sit the tourney out. Sure enough, the U.S. Open became the first major tournament to offer equal prize money for both sexes that year.</p>
<p>Professional tennis is unique in sports in that it often combines men&#39;s and women&#39;s tournaments. To fans of both men&#39;s and women&#39;s tennis, this offers the advantage of being able to watch a men&#39;s match and then walk a short distance to see some women&#39;s tennis. This also offers an advantage to women players, as they can point to discrepancies in prize money between men and women in the same tournament, even if the male players are generating the lion&rsquo;s share of the revenue. WNBA players can&#39;t compare their pay to the men of the NBA, nor can women pro golfers do it with their male counterparts. Their respective competitions aren&#39;t held jointly with men, so they have discreet revenue streams upon which their prize money is determined.</p>
<p>A simple way to illustrate this point is looking at ticket prices for the U.S. Open tennis tournament for 2018. The men&#39;s semifinal will set you back <a href="https://www.ticketcity.com/flushing-tickets/arthur-ashe-stadium-tickets/2018-us-open-tennis-session-22-mens-semifinals-and-mixed-doubles-finals-sep-7-2018-1751485.html">$3,370</a>, while the women&#39;s costs <a href="https://www.ticketcity.com/flushing-tickets/arthur-ashe-stadium-tickets/2018-us-open-tennis-session-21-womens-semifinals-sep-6-2018-1751484.html">$989</a>&nbsp;for the exact same seat. While the demand to see the men play this match is 340 percent greater than for women, they receive not a dime more than a woman, while having to win three sets out of five instead of two of three. By what economic standard of capitalism could this be considered fair?</p>
<p>While most men on the ATP tour don&rsquo;t think this is equitable, they&#39;re afraid to go public with their feelings. When the Serbian star Novak Djokovic <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/tennis/novak-djokovic-slammed-for-saying-men-should-be-paid-more-than-women-a6945016.html">spoke</a>,&nbsp;saying men should get paid more because there&#39;s more interest in men&#39;s matches, he received heavy criticism for his honesty. When Ray Moore, CEO and tournament director at the Indian Wells tournament, <a href="http://www.espn.com/tennis/story/_/id/15039381/indian-wells-ceo-raymond-moore-resigns-remarks-drew-outrage">said</a>&nbsp;that women players ride the coattails of the men, which is harsh but undeniable, he got fired. When you&#39;ve attained equal pay via a stunt match and the concept of &ldquo;equity&rdquo; rather than the free markets that apply in every other arena, you&#39;ve built a house of cards.&nbsp;</p>
Chris Becktag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/223392017-10-05T07:02:00-04:002017-10-04T14:32:49-04:00An Astros World Series Title Would be Cathartic<p>It would be excellent if the Houston Astros won the World Series. I write that as a Red Sox fan. An Astros World Series victory would give some sort of catharsis for the people of Southeast Texas that are attempting to piece their lives back together after the wreckage of Hurricane Harvey. What good is sport if not a way to unify a region, especially in tough times? Red Sox fans remember April 2013, and the Marathon bombings. That October World Series win was special to fans and players alike. David Ortiz spills plenty of potent words describing the experience in <em>Papi</em>, his recently released memoir.</p>
<p>The Astros used to be the Colt 45s. Outlaws of the outlaw state. The state that wanted to become their own country, much like Trump&rsquo;s followers, mostly isolated geographically and culturally from the coasts, want to live in their own delusional country. When the Astros entered the majors as an expansion franchise in 1962, guns were the chosen cultural symbol of the franchise. NASA was nascent, the Apollo program having started just the year before. J.R. Richards and Nolan Ryan amassed crazy strikeout totals in the early 1980s. Houston entered the majors in the National League, then became members of the newly-formed NL Central in 1994. From there they found success, winning over 90 games three times between 1998 and 2001.</p>
<p>That success never translated to October, though, as they bowed out in the NLDS all three years. In 2004 and 2005, the Astros won the wild card. You might remember Carlos Beltran&rsquo;s epic 2004 power surge. He set a postseason record with eight homers that October. Houston made the NLCS, and led the series 3-2 over St. Louis, before dropping a gut-wrenching Game 6 in 12 innings and going on to lose Game 7. The following year, the Astros only won 89 games, but again made the postseason as a wild-card entry. That October, they got their revenge on the Cardinals, behind two masterful Roy Oswalt starts, winning in six. They got swept in the World Series by the White Sox. You probably don&rsquo;t remember that one because it wasn&rsquo;t memorable.</p>
<p>After losing 106 games in 2011 and 107 in 2012, they took their 100 losses to the AL West, boosting the win totals of the Angels, Rangers, and A&rsquo;s at the time. The Astros hired Jeff Luhnow to be their general managers in the winter of 2011. He was hired in part because of his unique upbringing. Luhnow&rsquo;s parents moved from New York City to Mexico City before he was born. He spent his first 15 years there. His fluency in Spanish and bicultural roots were named as a factor in his success in player development with the Cardinals. Luhnow&rsquo;s Astros now possess the best middle infield combo in the game. At second base, MVP-candidate Jose Altuve. At shortstop, the multi-talented Carlos Correa.</p>
<p>Houston&rsquo;s prolific offense includes the emergent Marwin Gonzalez (.303/.377/.530), former Red Sox outfielder Josh Reddick&rsquo;s career year (.314 with 34 doubles to go along with above-average defense in right), and the underrated season of 23-year-old Alex Bregman (one of four major leaguers who finished with at least 39 doubles, 17 HRs, and 17 steals). Luhnow landed longtime Tiger Justin Verlander, giving Houston two high-level postseason starters in the rotation, next to 2015 Cy Young winner Dallas Keuchel.&nbsp;Cameron Maybin (33 of 39 in steals), via another waiver deadline deal from the Angels, gives them an added dimension on the bases.&nbsp;Lance McCullers, who missed much of the season with a back injury, might have the best pure stuff of any Astro. The 24-year-old made only three starts after July, but struck out 132 in 118 innings. Will manager A.J. Hinch give McCullers a Game 3 or possible Game 4 start, despite the rust?</p>
<p>Let me remind you, I&rsquo;m a Red Sox fan. I want to see Chris Sale dominate, David Price save Boston in sticky 6<sup>th</sup> and 7<sup>th</sup> innings, and Craig Kimbrel close out three games to propel Boston back to the ALCS. I&rsquo;m also a human, and want the people of Houston to witness some celebrations. I&rsquo;d love to see the Red Sox advance with this new group, led by the often-unhittable Sale, the trio of B&rsquo;s ringing the outfield. Especially after last October&#39;s sweep at the hands of Cleveland.</p>
<p>Speaking of Cleveland, a team that set an American League record with 22 straight victories, nobody wants to face them either. Cleveland has lost four games since August 24<sup>th</sup>. They&rsquo;ve gone beyond hot. And now bullpen star Andrew Miller returns. Like the Astros, Cleveland has no weaknesses. Rotation? Check. Bullpen? Check. Defense? Check. Lineup depth? Check. Power? Check. Speed on the bases? Half-Check.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the best bullpens in the game (by ERA) happen to belong to the postseason teams: Cleveland (2.89), Boston (3.15), and the New York Yankees (3.34) led the pack. October baseball will see more pitching changes than ever. Why pitch a semi-tired starter who isn&rsquo;t your ace in the 5<sup>th</sup> or 6<sup>th</sup> inning, when you can rely on four dominant relievers to get you through the rest of the game? This is the Yankees best chance at getting past Cleveland.</p>
<p><strong>Predictions:</strong> Houston over Boston in 5. Cleveland over New York in 4.</p>
Jonah Halltag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/223342017-10-04T10:09:00-04:002017-10-05T08:07:41-04:00Baseball: The Long and Long of It<p>On Sept. 28, 1919, the New York Giants beat the Philadelphia Phillies 6-1 in a nine-inning game that lasted 51 minutes. Granted, the game came on the last day of the season&mdash;the first half of a double-header that must&rsquo;ve been torture for the players. At the end of the day, the Phillies would sit a distant 47.5 games behind the pennant-winning Cincinnati Reds, while the Giants would end up nine games back.&nbsp;Clearly, the players in Philadelphia that day were in a hurry to shut things down and get back home for some off-season hunting, fishing, and drinking beer out of a pail. But still&hellip; 51 minutes.</p>
<p>In recent years, there have been renditions of the pre-game National Anthem that have lasted 51 minutes. There have been relief pitchers who&rsquo;ve taken 51 minutes to wander in from the bullpen. Robinson Cano takes that long to exit the batter&rsquo;s box after hitting a home run (or even what he<i> </i>thinks <i>might be</i> a home run).</p>
<p>Which is to say the game has slowed down considerably since 1919.&nbsp;A typical American League game has grown from around an hour-and-a-half in the 1920s, to one hour and 58 minutes in 1943, to a stultifying three hours and five minutes in 2017, an increase of about five minutes over the previous season. And that&rsquo;s just the regular season. As we all know, it&rsquo;s now when baseball truly wobbles off into deep space, sending fans both at home and at the ballpark into a post-season zombie state with gaping mouths, vacant eyes, twitching hands and feet, and, in many cases, a hunger for football.</p>
<p>In the 2016 World Series between the Cubs and the Indians, the games ran 3:37, 4:04, 3:33, 3:16, 3:27, 3:29, and 4:28. Yesterday, the first game of the 2017 post-season checked in at 3:51, and I found myself awake at midnight, nodding off occasionally as I confirmed (not happily) that the Yankees put the Twins safely to bed for the winter. As a comparison,&nbsp;the 1957 World Series between the Yankees and Milwaukee Braves (a year I pulled at random) featured games, all daytime affairs, that ran 2:10, 2:26, 3:18, 2:31, 2:00, 2:09 and 2:34.</p>
<p>Baseball claims to be aware of the problem of excessively long games. Commissioner Bud Selig used to periodically call for measures to shorten the game. He did this in the same way that American presidents periodically call for measures to reduce the national debt. Analysis shows that the initiation of MLB&rsquo;s new &ldquo;speed-up&rdquo; rules in 2008 dropped regular-season game times from 2:51 all the way down to 2:49. If you can recall, Selig vowed to impose the same rules as the 2010 season began, yet the first two games of the year between the Red Sox and Yankees lasted nearly four hours each and brought a rebuke from umpire Joe West, who called the delay tactics employed by both teams &ldquo;pathetic and embarrassing and a disgrace to baseball.&rdquo; West, in turn, was criticized by Yankee Mariano Rivera and Boston&rsquo;s Dustin Pedroia for daring to speak up, and reportedly admonished by MLB higher-ups. (It should be noted that no fans appear to have been consulted on the matter.)</p>
<p>Now, Selig&rsquo;s successor Rob Manfred is making the same sort of noises. He says he&rsquo;s &ldquo;encouraged&rdquo; by conversations he&rsquo;s had with the union and &ldquo;direct engagement with players,&rdquo; whatever that means. Baseball management now routinely proposes changes to the way the game is played only to have them rejected by the players. (One of his proposals, which would limit catchers to one trip to the mound per inning, should be called The Gary Sanchez Rule.) Anyway, even if Manfred puts in serious measures to move things along, no one knows what might happen if teams fail to comply. My guess is that noncompliance would result in a long delay in the middle of the game as managers and umpires discussed just who was delaying the game, and how, and possibly even why.</p>
<p>You <i>do</i> have to wonder about a sport that, in an age when everything is delivered more quickly and efficiently, allows its product to drag on like a chess match in which the moves are sent back and forth by registered letter. It&rsquo;s as if NASCAR suddenly decided to introduce the Daytona 5,000. Or Uncle Ben came out with a new product: Hour Rice. You&rsquo;re headed down the wrong road, baseball, and at this rate you&rsquo;ll never find your way home again.</p>
Charles Monagantag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/222862017-09-26T07:02:00-04:002017-10-02T11:51:44-04:00Donald Trump and the Death of “Stick to Sports”<p>No one expected last weekend to be dominated by a fight between Donald Trump and America&rsquo;s black athletes, but that&#39;s what we got. In the space of about 12 hours, Trump trashed football players who kneel during the national anthem (&quot;Get that son of a bitch off the field!&quot;) and uninvited the NBA champion Golden State Warriors from the White House due to star Steph Curry&#39;s reluctance to attend. All through Saturday and Sunday, prominent athletes (<a href="https://twitter.com/KingJames/status/911610455877021697">LeBron James</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/MartysaurusRex/status/911690387089186817">Martellus Bennett</a>) responded to Trump through social media and symbolic actions, kneeling or linking arms during the national anthem just as the targets of Trump&rsquo;s ire have done.</p>
<p>The debate that&rsquo;s followed Trump&rsquo;s comments has featured some highly effective righteous anger, as well as insightful commentary on the nature of white supremacy, protest, and sports itself. At the same time, given the number of pressing concerns facing the country and the world right now, many commentators have complained that sports-based controversies are a distraction. &quot;Trump joining NBA Twitter is fun,&quot; <a href="https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/911623760360411137">chided </a><a href="https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/9116237603">Vox</a><a href="https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/911623760360411137">&#39;s Matt Yglesias on Twitter</a>, &quot;but Trumpcare isn&#39;t officially dead yet and it&#39;s most dangerous when people aren&#39;t paying attention.&quot; Some have <a href="https://t">gone far enough to suggest</a> that Trump is <i>deliberately</i> focusing on the trivial in order to create a diversion, allowing him to advance substantive evils like healthcare or tax reform or the newly revised travel ban.</p>
<p>The central premise of these criticisms is that policy is important and rhetoric is not: policy affects people&rsquo;s lives, whereas rhetoric is just empty verbiage. Yglesias&rsquo; description of the fracas as &ldquo;fun&rdquo; is a tell&mdash;to him, it&rsquo;s an entertaining distraction, but one we can&rsquo;t afford to indulge in right now.</p>
<p>But it&rsquo;s a terrible mistake to think that rhetorical issues are basically meaningless and only policy has any impact. Now more than ever it&#39;s clear that one of the major powers available to a president is setting the tone of the public narrative, for better or worse. The Trump administration has caused plenty of damage in the policy arena&mdash;more through strategic negligence than legislation&mdash;but not as much as many feared: as yet there&rsquo;s been no wall, no tax cuts, no Trumpcare. (A Saturday dominated by the athletes story didn&#39;t save Graham-Cassidy from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/09/24/gop-health-bill-in-major-peril-as-collins-says-it-is-very-difficult-to-envision-supporting-it/?utm_term=.be8daed920cc">edging closer to death Sunday morning</a>.) But Trump has arguably caused more damage with his rhetoric&mdash;he&#39;s approved of white supremacists, promoted racist attacks on Latinos and Muslims, demonized his political opponents and the media, and even<a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/"> </a><a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/9/22/16349966/north-korea-trump-dotard">brought us to the brink of nuclear war</a>. Think about the situation we have now, in which Nazis are marching proudly and white supremacists commit assault and murder without even trying to disguise their motives. Did that come from some piece of legislation? Or did it come from Trump (and other prominent Republicans) signaling through rhetoric that white supremacist discourse is acceptable?</p>
<p>Some might argue that attacking Colin Kaepernick or Stephen Curry is different than attacking, say, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-trumps-history-judge-gonzalo-curiel/story?id=46916250">Judge Curiel</a> or <a href="%22htt">Khizr Khan</a>. But that&rsquo;s based on the false premise that sports are detached from public discourse. Sports are culture, and culture is where the culture wars are fought. What we saw last weekend, in fact, is <a href="http://www.bayareasportsguy.com/ruthless-lawyer-guy-drops-some-knowledge-on-the-day">the death of &quot;stick to sports&quot;</a>&mdash;the idea that sports are divorced from politics, and athletes and sports commentators should refrain from commenting on the latter. This has always been a misguided idea&mdash;athletes from Jesse Owens and Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali and Billie Jean King have been willing or unwilling political figures&mdash;but it&rsquo;s now been exposed as absurd: when the president&rsquo;s platform of white grievance includes not just politically active athletes but even personal fouls in football, it&rsquo;s clear that sports are bound up in political discourse. There&rsquo;s no direct connection between &ldquo;Personal foul calls are ruining football&rdquo; and &ldquo;Mexico is sending their rapists to the United States,&rdquo; but they go together seamlessly: both dispense with compassion in an attempt to recover a mythical, simpler past.</p>
<p>In that context, it&rsquo;s perfectly appropriate for the Warriors to decline an invitation to visit Trump&rsquo;s White House. I&rsquo;ve no idea if a championship team&#39;s visit to the White House will ever again be a nonpartisan issue, as it was as recently as George W. Bush&rsquo;s presidency. Some would say it never should have been; after all, the presidency is obviously the ultimate partisan political office. I regret the loss of a nonpartisan celebration of the triumphant heroes, and I wish the United States had a head of state who wasn&#39;t the head of government, like parliamentary systems do, to conduct such a celebration. But right now we have a president&mdash;and a party&mdash;that&rsquo;s committed to undermining the civil society on which sports, like everything else, rests. Athletes should not remain neutral about that effort.</p>
<p>As long as there are celebrity athletes, there will be people who ridicule those athletes&rsquo; attempts at political expression, but Trump has done us the favor of exposing that ridicule as hollow. The question isn&rsquo;t whether sports are part of political discourse, but whether the athletes themselves will avail themselves of that discourse. Increasingly, it seems, they are, and those who oppose Trump and what he represents should encourage them&mdash;not dismiss them as a distraction.</p>
Tom Hitchnertag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/222832017-09-25T10:10:00-04:002017-09-25T10:20:25-04:00Freedom 1, Trump 0<p>Steve Mnuchin, Treasury secretary and flap-faced rich guy, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/nfl-players-free-speech-time-us-treasury-chief/story?id=50047860">says</a>&nbsp;football players &ldquo;have the right to have the First Amendment off the field.&rdquo; His view can be defended, I suppose. People on the job don&rsquo;t get to say things they might say off it. Contract clauses or team rules might bind players from being controversial when the cameras are on. But the contracts and rules don&rsquo;t seem to do that. What the players have to deal with is booing, both in the stands and on the part of Mnuchin&rsquo;s boss. This boss is the walking ball of disgruntlement known as Donald Trump. He&rsquo;s been on a tear about players who take a knee during the anthem and how they ought to be punished.</p>
<p>Maybe Trump wants to give his devot&eacute;es something to get pumped about as Obamacare repeal dribbles toward its death. Maybe, as a viewer, he can&rsquo;t stand the sight of black players showing what they think of police brutality. Probably both these motives hold. Walt Disney knew people would like footage of baby seals because he liked footage of baby seals. I bet Trump&rsquo;s the same way about what grinds his gums as he plays with the clicker. The surprise is that, so far, the divide over player protests has cut against Trump.</p>
<p>Until now only a handful of players took part in the protests. But this Sunday Trump&rsquo;s remarks caused players, coaches, and even team owners to pull his nose. &ldquo;NFL players across the league knelt, locked arms, raised their fists and even refused to come out of the locker room during the national anthem Sunday,&rdquo; writes&nbsp;<a href="http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/20800784/nfl-players-coaches-owners-kneel-lock-arms-national-anthem">ESPN</a>. &ldquo;They were joined by coaches and even owners.&rdquo; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl-players-kneel-during-national-anthem-following-further-trump-tweets/2017/09/24/67415350-a12e-11e7-8cfe-d5b912fabc99_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_trumpnfl-257pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory"><i>The</i> </a><i><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl-players-kneel-during-national-anthem-following-further-trump-tweets/2017/09/24/67415350-a12e-11e7-8cfe-d5b912fabc99_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_trumpnfl-257pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory">Washington Post</a> </i>tells us&nbsp;<i>&ldquo;</i>virtually all NFL players on the sidelines prior to kickoff of Sunday&rsquo;s slate of 14 games locked arms with each other&rdquo; during the anthem, though a non-viewer can only guess how they did it while some of them were kneeling.</p>
<p>Some conservatives have sniped that nobody&rsquo;s on the protesters&rsquo; side except sports media. Apparently no, and we&rsquo;ve found out thanks to Trump. Back when Richard Nixon was defending virgins and the flag against hippies, an aide promised that this strategy would split the country in two and give Republicans the bigger half. All Trump has shown is that the NFL is one big lump, and that this mass favors the right of athletes to make with uncomfortable opinions. How the fans weigh in may change matters. But America just had a great day.</p>
<p><b>Self-awareness, Newt edition.&nbsp; </b>Now that the boss has pointed a finger, Fox News has been paying special attention to the menace of black athletes with something to say. Newt Gingrich went <a href="http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/09/24/gingrich-rips-nfl-anthem-kneelers-arrogant-young-millionaires-who-need-therapy">on air</a>&nbsp;to unload the following <i>sagesse</i>. &ldquo;If you&#39;re a multimillionaire who feels oppressed, you need a therapist, not a publicity stunt,&rdquo; he said. A multimillionaire who feels oppressed. Does Newt have any idea who he&rsquo;s flacking for?</p>
<p><i>&mdash;Follow C.T. May on Twitter:</i> <a href="https://twitter.com/CTMay3"><i>@</i><i>CTMay3</i></a></p>
C.T. Maytag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/222082017-09-11T07:01:00-04:002017-09-11T13:33:11-04:00Michael Bennett's Racial Profiling Story Isn't Credible<p>ESPN announcer Stephen A. Smith puts on a face to convey gravitas. He used that <a href="https://youtu.be/UYIoyVzEwxo">visage</a>&nbsp;when he said, &ldquo;I&#39;m incredibly grateful that Michael Bennett is alive,&rdquo; referring to NFL player Michael Bennett&rsquo;s allegation on Wednesday that he was racially profiled and physically abused by Las Vegas police officers after the Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor fight that took place on August 26. The announcer added, &ldquo;He could have been taken out of here considering the kind of climate we&#39;re living in now.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The police were responding to a call saying there was an active shooter in a Las Vegas club that the Seattle Seahawk was hanging out in after the boxing match. As it happened, no shots were fired. It was just a loud noise caused by velvet rope stanchions falling on a tile floor. Nevertheless, there was panic. A <a href="https://youtu.be/ki33OelU1YM">video</a>&nbsp;released by the police confirms that many of those people were black, yet Bennett claims that the police singled him out because he was a black man. Smith won&#39;t address this key point. He deals with facts that fit outside the narrative by ignoring them.</p>
<p>Smith and much of the sports media (including FS1, CBS, and NBC) reported the event exactly the way Bennett has said it went down in the <a href="https://twitter.com/mosesbread72/status/905430701595652096">statement</a>&nbsp;he released. Social media led the way, as it always does when the oppressor/victim dynamic is in play. Conclusions are drawn instantly on Twitter, they spread, and the rage pours forth in a collective spasm. There&#39;s a distinct lack of will to get both sides of the story before wailing and pointing fingers. The mob makes up its mind instantly.</p>
<p>Smith didn&#39;t say much about the other side of this story, except &ldquo;The police are going to cover themselves.&rdquo; In other words, anything they have to say in their defense should be doubted. He knows his audience is eager to have their biases confirmed and wants to marginalize any counter-narratives that may interfere with this. This is another way facts get suppressed in the current post-truth era.</p>
<p>In addition to saying that the two Latino police officers who detained him put a knee to his back, Bennett also stated, &ldquo;They singled me out and pointed their guns at me for doing nothing more than simply being a black man in the wrong place at the wrong time.&quot; But why did the police single out the football star for being black when there were so many black people to choose from? Deadspin posted a <a href="https://twitter.com/Deadspin/status/905609841833418756">photo</a>&nbsp;that it claimed showed a police officer pointing a gun towards Bennett, but the image isn&#39;t clear enough to rule out it being just a Taser. It looks more like a Taser than a gun. Bennett said police officer with the gun to his head said, &ldquo;[I&#39;ll] blow your fucking head off&rdquo; if the Seahawks star moved, but there&#39;s no video corroboration of this. TMZ released a <a href="https://youtu.be/ggNikMTIgL8">video</a>&nbsp;of the detention that showed no police misconduct.</p>
<p>Bennett claimed the police finally released him after realizing he was a famous football player. His attorney, John Burris, released a <a href="https://m.facebook.com/AdamSchefter/posts/1615850461800922">statement</a>&nbsp;that said, &ldquo;Only after the Officers confirmed that Mr. Bennett was in fact a Super Bowl Champion and star National Football League player did they finally release him from custody,&rdquo; as if being on a winning Super Bowl team <i>and</i> a star player automatically makes one immune from future arrests. Such embellishment only makes Bennett&#39;s side of the story seem less credible. The police let him go because they realized they&#39;d detained the wrong person.</p>
<p>Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Undersheriff Kevin McMahill said that when police charged the club, they saw Bennett crouching behind a slot machine. When they turned to him, he bolted from the casino, jumped over a four-foot wall, and then jumped into traffic. The police, thinking he might have been the active shooter they&#39;d incorrectly been told existed, then detained him as a precautionary measure. They must now review 120 videos to determine what actually happened.</p>
<p>The crux of Bennett&#39;s story is that the police racially profiled him. The media reporting this are taking his word, but there&#39;s no evidence to support the claim. This isn&#39;t ethical, professional journalism. The two cops involved are also minorities, but this is getting played down for obvious reasons. Lacking the racial component, which doesn&#39;t appear to exist, the case becomes one of simple police misconduct. The officers must be disciplined accordingly if the 120 videos show that Michael Bennett was telling the truth. Perhaps Bennett, who was one of the players kneeling for the national anthem last season, sensed an opportunity to score some political points with a tall tale. I don&#39;t know if that&rsquo;s true, but it&#39;s possible and worthy of media investigation. Even his own attorney <a href="https://twitter.com/mattmarkovich/status/905494361097486336">admitted</a>&nbsp;that race wasn&#39;t a factor in Bennett&rsquo;s detention, but certain people in the media and on Twitter will keep on saying it was.&nbsp;</p>
Chris Becktag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/221762017-09-04T10:12:00-04:002017-09-04T10:22:26-04:00Scramble for the American League Wild-Card<p>There&rsquo;s no denying that the 2017 MLB season has been a bizarre one. Whether it&rsquo;s the historic league-wide home-run binge, the reports of juiced baseballs, or the myriad of injuries to the game&rsquo;s best pitchers, the season has been a topsy-turvy ride. Add in the fact that the San Francisco Giants have sunk so thoroughly from the top tier of the NL while their rival, the 92-44 Dodgers, are on pace to win 110 games. Whether it&rsquo;s Aaron Judge&rsquo;s miraculous first half of the season, Giancarlo Stanton&rsquo;s insane second, or Phillies rookie Rhys Hoskins hitting 11 homers in a 14-game August stretch, it&rsquo;s clear that the game is tilting toward the home run. For everyone but the Red Sox, that is. Other than Kansas City, Boston is the lone American League team playing National League-style baseball, relying on aggressive base-running, defense, and a dominant bullpen. Though the story has been told all season, the hole left by David Ortiz is glaring.</p>
<p>Rather than skimming over each of these storylines, let&rsquo;s dive into one that impacts the postseason: the murky American League Wild-Card Race. As of Sunday night, September 3rd, the Astros sit atop the AL West with a 13.5-game cushion over Texas, and a 3-game lead on Cleveland for the top record and home-field advantage. After a successful and cathartic return to Houston on Saturday, the Astros hope October serves as a unifying distraction for all of Hurricane Harvey&rsquo;s victims.</p>
<p>In the Central, red-hot Cleveland is on an 11-game winning streak, bumping their lead over the Twins up to 9 games. Meanwhile in the East, the Red Sox lead has been trimmed down to 3.5 games, after the Yankees took 3 of 4 over the weekend. Some Sox fans will be paranoid that the lead is slipping away like it did in 2011. With 25 games remaining and a 3-game cushion in the loss column, the lead doesn&rsquo;t feel safe. But when you consider the Red Sox are 40-25 at Fenway, and have nine straight home games (Toronto, Tampa, and Oakland) while the Yankees hit the road for nine in a row (Baltimore, Texas, and Tampa), the threat of losing more of that lead in the next 10 days loses some of its potency. A win on Sunday, behind Cy Young-candidate Chris Sale, would&rsquo;ve given Boston ample breathing room. Instead, the standings watch will get obsessive. After those nine dates, New York faces Baltimore again and then Minnesota, who currently leads the 2<sup>nd</sup> wild-card spot by 1.5 games over the Angels and Orioles.</p>
<p>In 1994, then Commissioner Bud Selig added the wild-card to the postseason format, while realigning each league, moving from two seven-team divisions in each league, to three five-team divisions in each league by 1998. That was the year the 29<sup>th</sup> and 30<sup>th</sup> MLB teams arrived, via expansion. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays (now the Rays) and the Arizona Diamondbacks (now the Goldschmidts) joined MLB. Arizona has regained its swagger this year, and will very likely host the NL Wild-Card game. From &rsquo;94 through 2012, the wild-card was given to one team in each league, which kept the postseason entries at four per league, with the best-of-five divisional series as the start of October baseball. Baseball purists, as they often are when any big change is made, were temporarily irate. Gradually, the added postseason round was accepted and the ensuing September and October drama was celebrated. Selig made perhaps a more controversial change in 2012, when he pushed for a second wild-card entry in each league. The wild-card game, was immediately mocked. Dubbed a &ldquo;coin-flip&rdquo; game due to the arbitrary nature of a one-game playoff, the race for the two wild-card spots expanded the rooting interested of several more team&rsquo;s fans each year, as September baseball took on added relevance for six-eight more teams, on those occasions that the races were close. On the other hand, a one-game playoff isn&rsquo;t exactly the same as a five-game series.</p>
<p>This year&rsquo;s AL wild-card race looks promising, regardless of the .500 records involved. Today, no less than eight of the AL&rsquo;s 15 teams are within spitting distance of the second wild-card spot. The Yankees have fallen back to the pack. The surging Orioles have slugged 55 homers in the month of August, four away from the single month MLB record. What&rsquo;s shocking is that they are one of <i>11</i> teams to have 55 in August. With the power surge, Baltimore has vaulted themselves over .500 winning seven straight. Meanwhile, the Twins have climbed into the second wild-card slot with a four-gamer themselves.&nbsp; Keep in mind Minnesota lost 103 games last year, and it&rsquo;s easy to root for the young club, which happened to trade for the oldest active player in the majors, 44 year-old Bartolo Colon, in July. Colon, like the old guy with the post-moves on the YMCA basketball court, survives despite the doubters. He managed to resurrect his season after the Twins took a &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; flier, landing him in the Twin Cities. Colon&rsquo;s 8.14 ERA in 13 starts with Atlanta seemed to spell the end of an illustrious career, but he&rsquo;s been decent (4.04 ERA in eight starts with Minnesota).&nbsp;</p>
<p>American League Wild-Card Standings (thru 9/3)</p>
<p><img alt="" src="https://splicetoday.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/editor/pictures/546/content_Screen_Shot_2017-09-04_at_10.21.09_AM.png" style="width: 302px; height: 163px;" /></p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.teamrankings.com/mlb/ranking/future-sos-by-other">TeamRankings</a>, the Yankees, Twins, and Royals have the easiest remaining schedules among AL wild-card hopefuls, followed by the Rangers. Fans of the Orioles, Angels, Rays, and Mariners may not want to know that their climb to the postseason is a steeper one. The lowly White Sox and A&#39;s are the two teams every AL team wants to face at the moment. Kansas City gets six more chances to beat the pale hose, while Texas meets Oakland in seven of their final 10 contests.</p>
<p>A variety of teams find themselves involved in this race to the one-game playoff. The Angels front office just pushed their chips into the middle of the table, acquiring Justin Upton and the four years and $88 million remaining on his contract, to provide some support for Mike Trout in the lineup. The Angels rotation, on the other hand, inspires something other than confidence. A team like the Twins are just happy to be in the thick of it, even without slugger Miguel Sano for the last two weeks. Without great pitching&mdash;scratch that&mdash;without decent pitching, the Twins, Orioles, and Angels are lucky to be in the October conversation. But that idea suggests that October teams should have quality pitching staffs, and two factors may make that idea irrelevant to the major leagues of 2017. While dominant pitching is still a very necessary element to winning once October baseball starts, getting there, especially in the two-wild-card format, may be a different story. <a href="https://qz.com/949424/stem-cell-therapy-is-poised-to-disrupt-the-tommy-john-epidemic-in-baseball/">The prevalence of pitching injuries</a> and the <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/in-mlbs-new-home-run-era-its-the-baseballs-that-are-juicing/">juiced ball</a> are two key factors in the changing landscape of major league baseball. If even well-executed pitches leave the field as homers, and each off-speed pitch wears down a pitcher&rsquo;s elbow that much more, the odds of keeping an above-average starting rotation intact for a full season are dismal. Those odds are even worse in the American League, which doesn&rsquo;t give those on the mound the added boost of facing each other in the batter&rsquo;s box.</p>
<p>Who will reach that October wild-card game? All we can reliably know is that relievers will be used heavily.&nbsp;</p>
Jonah Halltag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/221742017-09-04T05:58:00-04:002017-09-23T19:51:56-04:00The Ethics of Watching Football<p>Saturday at 10 a.m. found me watching ESPN&#39;s College Gameday. It told me the inspiring story of Florida linebacker David Reese, who made 12 tackles in a game last season against LSU <em>with two broken wrists. </em>Then he played against Alabama in the SEC championship game. After that, he finally told his coaches he was in pain. &nbsp;He played because &quot;it had to be done,&quot; he told the SEC Network.</p>
<p>That&#39;s sort of amazing. That&#39;s courageous. That&#39;s insane. And one thing that disturbs me is that I did watch those games. They were excellent. Sometimes you watch a weekend of football, and start to realize that you&rsquo;ve spent a significant time seeing people carted off the field, their knees blown out, their brains bruised, their ribs broken. At a self-reflective moment it&#39;s enough to make you wonder.</p>
<p>By around 3:00 on Saturday, I was watching the Maryland-Texas game. I was amazed how well my Terps were doing. Then they carted Antwaine Richardson off the field on a stretcher while teammates prayed and cried. Next they tended to Terps starting quarterback, Tyrrell Pigrome; he limped off with assistance. Those are college students, playing for my alma mater. But Maryland won, 51-41: best win for the program in awhile; first time they beat a top 25 team since 2010. I was thrilled, and felt sort of guilty about it.</p>
<p>As my father often reminded me, I was cheering for the Washington Redskins&mdash;the team that dare nor speak its name on campus&mdash;before I could walk. I was a crazed young fan through the eras of Lombardi, George Allen, Sonny Jurgensen, Charlie Taylor, Joe Gibbs, John Riggins, and co. Even as I rooted on through the decades, however, I started to realize that I was delectating a spectacle of pain.</p>
<p>In 1974, my brother Bob and I were dating two sisters. One Sunday the four of us watched the &#39;Skins game at their house, then for some reason headed out for a drive and ended up at a bar out near Thurmont. There were three huge guys in the next booth that I recognized: Redskins linemen, including all-pro defensive tackle Diron Talbert. They had their legs propped up. They groaned even when raising their glasses. &quot;I need to take a leak but I can&#39;t stand up,&quot; said one.</p>
<p>As you might imagine, we were very concerned about the playoff run. Bob finally leaned across and asked them how bad they were hurt. They laughed in his face. &quot;It&#39;s always like this,&quot; said Talbert. &quot;Usually worse. We&#39;ll be good.&quot; We admired those tough motherfuckers, but also watched the game a bit differently after that.</p>
<p>Forty years later, Robert Griffin electrified DC. Rookie RG3 was an astonishing athlete, leaping about like a young Michael Vick: so fast, so bold, and so elusive. He ended up having various difficulties; one of them was certainly the cumulative effects of all the knee surgeries. The NFL features great athletes, and it breaks them down or just breaks them; I think of Bo Jackson, for instance, and how short was the time we got see him at his apex, and why.</p>
<p>The NFL presents an astonishing athletic spectacle, whether it&#39;s Odell Beckham catching a pass or Aaron Rodgers throwing one. But the injuries are not merely an unfortunate side effect. What&rsquo;s so compelling about football is that, for example, that guy just made a leaping, one-hand grab or lofted a perfect fade <em>while big aggressive people were trying to flip him over and crush him.</em> I do love baseball, basketball, and soccer. But they don&#39;t yield quite that kind of spectacle of aggression, courage, and improvisation in physically threatening situations. It gives you a vicarious adrenaline rush, but that might make the situation morally worse; we&#39;re <em>getting off</em> on the spectacle, which also entails the pain; the danger is part of what makes it compelling.</p>
<p>Obviously, all sorts of people are worried about football and are even worried about themselves as fans. If brains are injured, it seems ironic for high schools and colleges to sponsor and celebrate the activity. I know a couple of people who won&#39;t watch anymore. Players are retiring as the likelihood of permanent brain injury becomes more and more evident. Baltimore Ravens center John Urschel had been playing and pursuing a Ph.D. in mathematics at MIT. It struck him, as well it might, that mathematics is clearer to an undamaged brain; he didn&rsquo;t report to training camp this year.</p>
<p>There are many rationalizations: NFL players (though not college, high school or Arena League players) are well-paid to put their bodies and brains on the line. Nor are they coerced into doing so, as though they were Roman slaves in the Colosseum. On the other hand, many come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Almost 70 percent of NFL players are African-American. There are not necessarily many ways to rise, and I don&#39;t know how constrained people may actually feel to play, or how many options they have.</p>
<p>Now, whether or not it&rsquo;s right to play football, or for a university to have a football program, another set of ethical questions arises with regard to those who watch it. One set of these questions is, as we might put it, turned inward: why am I watching this? Am I consuming other people&#39;s pain as entertainment? There&rsquo;s a difference between watching simulated violence in a movie and watching real violence on a football field. On the other hand, I was also pretty glued to the set, watching people struggle through the waters of southeast Texas. Much television is a spectacle of suffering.</p>
<p>Let&#39;s say I concluded that the world would be a somewhat better place without football. Would it follow that it&rsquo;s wrong for me to watch it? Why, exactly? I thought the world would be better without Harvey too, but I watched it anyway. Is it because I <em>enjoy</em> watching football in a way that I don&#39;t exactly enjoy watching a flooded city? How exactly does that make the situation or me worse? I ask that question in puzzlement, because I also have a funny feeling that it does.</p>
<p>These games will take place whether I watch them or not. Of course, if no one watched them, they wouldn&rsquo;t be played. But I&rsquo;m making moral decisions in this world, not in a hypothetical world in which everyone behaves as I do. My actual cash contribution to the NFL or the NCAA is minimal; it comes with my satellite subscription, more or less. Admittedly, I bought a Redskins cap a couple of years ago, but if I stop participating, it will go right on. How responsible am I, and why?</p>
<p>Football fandom raises many interesting questions about the relation of individual and collective responsibility, and also about the nature of moral reasoning. I can be the change I want to see, perhaps, and not watch at all. In the real world that will have precious little effect. But what if everyone thought like that? If everyone thought like me overall, we&#39;d all be fucked, but also it&rsquo;s not evident why I should worry about that. I live in a world in which people think exactly as they do, and I am asking about the actual effect of me watching the &#39;Bama game tonight on actual people in the actual world.</p>
<p>Well, it&#39;s pretty minimal. But I&#39;d be lying if I said I didn&#39;t have misgivings about the whole thing. On the other hand, it&#39;s difficult to imagine America without football. Around this time of year, I always think about these things. Then I turn on the game.</p>
<p><em>&mdash;Follow Crispin Sartwell on Twitter: <a href="http://twitter.com/crispinsartwell">@CrispinSartwell</a></em></p>
Crispin Sartwelltag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/221262017-08-24T05:56:00-04:002017-08-23T21:48:03-04:00Williamsport Whirlygig<p>Just try explaining MLB&rsquo;s latest gimmick without stammering, backtracking or taking 20 minutes. It was the Little League Classic. Can you call a first-time annual event Classic? See, that is what happens. Too many damn questions.</p>
<p>The answer involves going to a remote town in central Pennsylvania where elite Little Leaguers play to see Big Leaguers compete on a somewhat neutral ground that is a Class A minor league diamond. And the crowd will number less than 2800, holding free tickets, no beer sales, and the game is broadcast live on national cable television. It&rsquo;s a game that counts in the standings, with both MLB clubs involved in the NL Central pennant race.</p>
<p>The Little League Classic was not played on a Little League field as the name suggests, but instead on a Class A minor league diamond in Williamsport, PA, the longtime hometown of the Little League World Series. This was the fourth game of a weekend series between the Pirates and Cardinals in Pittsburgh. St. Louis won Thursday and Friday. The Pirates prevailed on Saturday night, then both teams flew 20 minutes east to Williamsport to glad-hand the international youngsters of the Little League World Series tournament and bake in the Sunday afternoon sun at Lamade Stadium. It was fun to see hatless Cardinals players sweating in the awkward jersey-and-jeans combo in the stands before having to fulfill the contractual obligation that is the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball game. With important late August games ahead, here they were barnstorming in the local minor league facility (home to the Phillies Class A Williamsport Crosscutters) for a distracted crowd made up of Little Leaguers and their families. This was after a rain-delayed Saturday contest at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, so bullpens and patience were already stretched thin.</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s amazing how MLB continues to strive for a Medicine Show mentality for teams playing 162 regular season games on a set schedule with an enormous October postseason slate as well. But MLB insists on trying to sell its own fetid brand of snake oil by overloading the site-specific gimmickry. The upcoming &ldquo;Player&rsquo;s Weekend&rdquo; where teams wear softball style uniforms with forced nicknames on the back is a great example. Do you think the esteemed Yankees and their pinstripes wanted to surrender to this playground mentality for even a second? And, why should they? So MLB can sell more shirts and hats based on the forced frivolity of the occasion? Some players don&rsquo;t have zany nicknames, sorry, and they don&rsquo;t eat cereal for dinner or enjoy avocado toast at all hours. The &ldquo;Player&rsquo;s Weekend&rdquo; cap sells for $33, and my team, the Pirates, are wearing a hideous banana yellow number that looks like something you&rsquo;d see on an airport tarmac.</p>
<p>Leave it to me to attend the MLB Little League Classic, which was like boarding a ghost ship in a baseball Sargasso, with jagged rocks of child athlete exploitation dangerously close to the hull. There was no official &ldquo;sponsor&rdquo; (Taco Bell, Geico, Viagra?) No souvenir programs printed, no price on the tickets, no beer sold at the game. It was a greed surrender of sorts, in the name of youthful purity that is ESPN&rsquo;s Little League World Series gambit. They need ratings and MLB needs youth appeal, so it was the perfect match. Too bad nobody knew it was happening other than the braggarts at ESPN&rsquo;s media department and the lowlife memorabilia collectors hungry for the somewhat underwhelming selection of &ldquo;first&rdquo; Little League Classic ephemera. Heck, I had to &ldquo;mansplain&rdquo; this whole Williamsport shebang to half a dozen curious women in the Ohio branch of my family all week long.</p>
<p>Players from both MLB teams said all the right things as they went through the motions last Sunday night in the middle of Pennsylvania. Kids and pro ballplayers will always be a winning Norman Rockwell image. The dark cloud of inconvenience surrounding the Little League Classic melted away with images of Andrew McCutchen and Josh Bell spending fun time with the Little Leaguers.</p>
<p>I tried to get tickets online for weeks but there was radio silence on all fronts, including the hyperactive souk known as Craigslist. Not to be deterred, I went to Williamsport anyway, having booked a hotel room there back in April when MLB quietly announced their latest crappy idea to move teams around like infomercial shills. Hey, the Bucs won and I was happy and so were most of the people who got inside the tiny minor league park on a pleasant Sunday evening. It was kind of cool to see the international groups of Little League World Series participants sitting together in their uniforms. The Australian team was particularly boisterous, especially as they mixed with dowagers from Greenwich, CT, and other cousin-of-the-assistant GM dandies. They were a lanyard-wearing army with that smug air of knowing tickets were so scarce that no one knew what they looked like until minutes before the game.</p>
<p>Here&rsquo;s a chronological rundown of my trip to Williamsport made with my savvy 12-year-old daughter Roxanne who&rsquo;s up for this type of adventure. Hey kid, wanna go to Lycoming County, PA, with no hope for tickets to an unwatchable game in the second-oldest minor league ballpark? Sure, dad! After some family business in Ohio, we&rsquo;d been in Pittsburgh to see the weekend games against these same Cardinals. We approached from the west as Williamsport was on our way home to the Hudson Valley, so it all made sense. After this Cardinals travel madness, the Pirates were set to host the peaking-too-soon juggernaut Los Angeles Dodgers for a four-gamer back in Pittsburgh. As far as I know, that series was to be gimmick-free and would surely doom the Pirates effort to stay relevant in the NL Central race. But let&rsquo;s not get ahead of ourselves.</p>
<p><strong>3:31 p.m.</strong> <em>Primanti Brothers Restaurant, Altoona, Pa.</em><br />
Perky waitress has never heard of the Little League Classic. Little League World Series game between California team and South Carolina team is on one of 27 televisions around the joint. California catcher leaves game with agonizing Achilles injury off a foul ball.</p>
<p><strong>4:02 p.m</strong>. <em>Doing 73 mph on Interstate 80 East, 46 miles from Williamsport</em><br />
Satellite radio coverage of Yankees vs Red Sox marred by Joe Castiglione&rsquo;s annoying complaints about how long Sonny Gray takes between pitches. Sunshine making electronic sign advisories regarding Little League World Series traffic unreadable. No worries, Roxanne bought a miniature Buddha in the Strip District in Pittsburgh so we are all good.</p>
<p><strong>4:17 p.m.</strong> <em>Closing in on Williamsport</em><br />
Switched radio to Sirius XM The Joint, listening to excellent dancehall selections as we pass Mill Hall, PA. Enough Joe Castiglione already.</p>
<p><strong>4:33 p.m.</strong> <em>Rolling into Williamsport in a 2016 Volkswagen Jetta</em><br />
Very high number of cars up for sale and parked solo on the side of the road. Doesn&rsquo;t seem to be many takers. Or pedestrians. Or people in general.</p>
<p><strong>4:50 p.m.</strong> <em>Checking into Holiday Inn on Pine St.</em><br />
Front desk guy says tickets are &ldquo;impossible to get&rdquo; and he wishes he wasn&rsquo;t working so he could at least check out a public screening of the game somewhere. Warns me not to walk to BB&amp;T Ballpark (Bowman Field). It looks close, but it really is kind of far, he says.</p>
<p><strong>5:25 p.m</strong>. <em>Marching toward W. Fourth St., downtown Williamsport</em><br />
Fearing heavy traffic and parking issues, Roxanne and I begin a Bataan-style walk to the ballpark. We pass Victorian homes with giant porches, &ldquo;Millionaire&rsquo;s Row,&rdquo; a cinema and several churches. All seemingly abandoned as if sketched out by Rod Serling. The only human we see for eight blocks is a Papa John&rsquo;s Pizza delivery woman who is counting her cash as she plods back to her Camry. She got a tip. She has no tickets for the game.</p>
<p><strong>6:20 p.m.</strong> <em>Finally arrive at BB&amp;T Park</em><br />
Parched and foot-weary, we turn onto a pathway under the ballpark&rsquo;s main entrance signage. Cops are directing traffic, which isn&rsquo;t bad. Parking seems easy, too. Roxanne comes streaking past me hyperventilating. I fear a bee sting or some other injury, perhaps foot-related. She manages to express that she is injury-free as she explains who is standing behind us in the tiny group waiting near the main gate. It is YouTube sensation Alisha Marie. She gets a photo with her and is ecstatic as she sends texts to all her pals back in Rhinebeck, breathless as if Dave Parker or Ed Ott were hanging around or something. MLB media reps soon appear with full credentials for Marie and her stone-faced father, both wearing Cardinals gear. They brought them in to get the social media angle on the online preteen market angle.</p>
<p><strong>6:35 p.m</strong>. <em>Still outside the main gate.</em><br />
The sun is lowering strong beyond the West Branch of the Susquehanna River blasting harsh light on the generic ballpark entrance. There&rsquo;s not one single outdoor concession in the main gate area. There&rsquo;s a canopy with two women staffing a &ldquo;will call&rdquo; table that is as popular as the long-shuttered bars on Hepburn St. Roxanne is seated with her phone on a patch of grass. I have two fingers aloft as the buses pull up to the gate and release small groups of Little League parents who have no extras, of course. There is a schlubby guy from Staten Island who is organizing the ticket hopefuls. He counts five of us and greets each passing ticketholder with a buoyant but ineffective &ldquo;Heeere I am!&rdquo; Golf carts appear, lanyard-wearers double check on things. The Port-a-Johns on the nearby riverbank are quiet.</p>
<p><strong>7 p.m.</strong> <em>Still outside ballpark entrance.</em><br />
Desperation sets in as player intros are heard over the ballpark PA. The buses are less frequent and release only a few stragglers. Staten Island guy says MLB should take care of us. Plan Bs are concocted. There is a bike trail on the third baseline above the ballpark and fans can catch a glimpse of the action from there, says a BMX guy who keeps rolling through this sad tableau.<br />
<strong>7:25 p.m.</strong> <em>Two die-cut tickets suddenly in hand!</em><br />
I noticed a father of two who&rsquo;d been standing with us earlier talking to the Will Call betties. He&rsquo;s froth with gratitude as the older Tina Fey-type at the table produces a white envelope and hands him three. I walk toward the table. &ldquo;Got any no-shows?&rdquo; I ask. &ldquo;No, but I have extras,&rdquo; she says, holding up the envelope. &ldquo;Do you need one?&rdquo; &ldquo;Two please,&rdquo; I say with Roxanne beside me as I see the Staten Island guy rumbling toward us. Of course his seat is right next to mine as we dance through several rigged walkways and into section 7 of Bowman Field. I notice St. Louis pitcher Mike Leake is back to his hippy look.</p>
<p><strong>7:57 pm</strong> <em>Josh Bell at the plate</em><br />
As Bell prepares to hit a towering home run to right center to put the Buccos ahead, the loquacious Staten Island guy says he drove here from Tottenville because he collects stadiums. This is his 69<sup>th</sup> ballpark. He can&rsquo;t believe the Will Call betty gave us tickets. He manages to snag one of the free box lunches being distributed to the Little Leaguers and their parents.</p>
<p><strong>8:10 p.m.</strong> <em>Percussive surprise!</em><br />
A local drum corps suddenly springs to life with thunderous notes beside the third base grandstand of the steel-girder ballpark, scaring half the section to death. Ivan Nova makes Kolton Wong look bad on a called third strike to get out of a jam.</p>
<p><strong>8:38 p.m.</strong> <em>Free shirt Sunday.</em><br />
Cardinals manager Mike Matheny removes an ineffective Leake from the game. Now he&rsquo;s free to go shoplift more designer t-shirts at the Kohl&rsquo;s in downtown Williamsport (there is no Macy&rsquo;s). Staten Island guy on my left elbow makes rude remark about older woman getting hug from one of the racing Pierogis who made the trip from Pittsburgh. He says he should be back home by 3 a.m. I wish he would beat the traffic and leave early.</p>
<p><strong>9:20 p.m.</strong> <em>Yearbook material on video board.</em><br />
Among the millions MLB sunk into upgrading Bowman Field for this possibly one-off event was a video scoreboard in left field. Roxanne notices the player data includes &ldquo;Favorite Subject in School.&rdquo; Starling Marte was honest with his answer &ldquo;physical education.&rdquo; McCutchen said &ldquo;science&rdquo; and Adam Frazier lied with his &ldquo;math&rdquo; answer.</p>
<p><strong>9:56 p.m. </strong><em>A Rivero runs through it.</em><br />
Wearing his nickname &ldquo;Nightmare&rdquo; on the back of his zany jersey, Felipe Rivero takes the hill for the ninth inning. He does his usual 100-mph strikeout, rocket hit, rocket out and long fly ball to end it as McCutchen squeezes Paul DeJong&rsquo;s offering. Raise the Jolly Roger! Buccos win 6-3!</p>
<p><strong>10:01 p.m.</strong> <em>Handshakes all around</em><br />
Mimicking the Little Leaguers in the stands, the Bucs and Cardinals go through a handshake line that turns into a long, rambunctious trail of horseplay and somewhat genuine smiles. It was something to see and was the main &ldquo;takeaway&rdquo; for most of the jaded media types. The Mexican Little Leaguers seated behind the Cardinals dugout liked it so much they did a mass invasion of the dugout roof. The pundits insist this was a big hit, and the Little League Classic should be repeated, the say. An usher type in the third base aisle tells me it probably will be back next year. &ldquo;I heard it will be Mets-Phillies,&rdquo; he said.</p>
<p><strong>11:24 p.m.</strong> <em>Outdoor bar at The James restaurant at Holiday Inn</em><br />
The bar is a great mix of coaches, umpire types, TV production crew guys and Little League parents. A few at the bar are commending the quality of the Bowman Field infield. As the SportsCenter highlights show a second baseman robbing someone of a hit in Anaheim or somewhere out west, the entire bar pauses to admire the play. Big or Little, that is the sheer beauty of how baseball endures and is always worth the trip.</p>
Spike Vrushotag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/220592017-08-11T07:01:00-04:002017-08-12T08:56:46-04:00The Final Fall of Pete Rose <p>One of those mostly forgotten sports brouhahas from the 1990s took place during the 1999 World Series, when Major League Baseball announced its All-Century Team and Pete Rose was named to the team. It was the first major appearance in an officially sanctioned baseball event for baseball&rsquo;s hit leader since his banishment from the game for gambling a decade earlier, and before the ceremony NBC broadcaster Jim Gray gave an incongruously contentious interview. Gray badgered Rose about why he hadn&rsquo;t yet admitted that he&rsquo;d bet on baseball&mdash;Rose was still three years away from doing so&mdash;and at one point told Rose that &ldquo;Those who will hear this tonight will say you have been your own worst enemy and continue to be.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Gray, nobody&rsquo;s favorite broadcaster, was savaged and forced to deliver a partial on-air apology the following night. The timing of Gray&rsquo;s interrogation wasn&rsquo;t great&mdash;Bob Costas said it was as if some reporter had badgered Nixon about the Watergate tapes&nbsp;on the day of one of his daughters&rsquo; weddings&mdash;but the past 18 years have in many ways vindicated him. Especially the &ldquo;own worst enemy&rdquo; part.</p>
<p>I thought of that incident last week, when the revelation came out that Rose had admitted, in a lawsuit, to conducting a years-long affair with a teenager in the 1970s, which the woman says began when she was 15. Rose acknowledged the affair in a deposition, in which he stated that he &ldquo;believed&rdquo; the girl was 16 at the time.</p>
<p>The documents surfaced as part of a lawsuit Rose filed against John Dowd, the lawyer who investigated his gambling scandal in the 1980s (and is now part of Donald Trump&rsquo;s legal team in the Russia matter).&nbsp;This isn&rsquo;t a he said/she said situation, nor is there any chance this is an unfounded allegation. Rose has essentially admitted that he committed statutory rape.</p>
<p>The revelations led one of Rose&rsquo;s former teams, the Philadelphia Phillies, to cancel a Wall of Fame induction ceremony for him, which was scheduled for Saturday. Also cancelled were a series of related local events, including a roast of Rose, as well as scheduled appearance at an area casino.</p>
<p>It also forced the Phillies to scrap a related bobblehead giveaway and, according to news reports, to destroy all 35,000 of the bobbleheads. There&rsquo;s no word on whether the Phillies will allow the Phillie Phanatic to push a mock detonator, as he did during the Veterans Stadium implosion back in 2004.</p>
<p>There&rsquo;s a reason the Wall of Fame ceremony was scheduled in the first place&mdash;Rose is beloved in Philadelphia. He helped lead the Phillies to their first-ever championship in 1980. He was the first superstar athlete in the free agency era to choose Philadelphia. The media likes him too&mdash;he&rsquo;s a reliable quote, one of those all-time great local athletes (along with Charles Barkley, Doug Collins, and Bernard Hopkins) who can be counted on for a wide-ranging, news-making sports radio interview at least a couple of times a year. To this day a lot of Philly old-timers still decry the &ldquo;aloof&rdquo; Mike Schmidt, in favor of his contemporary Rose&rsquo;s more &ldquo;blue collar&rdquo; style.</p>
<p>Rose boosters are used to defending uncommonly sleazy behavior, from betting on games to lying about it for two decades to hoodwinking a legendary baseball writer (Roger Kahn) into signing his name to a bogus book professing Rose&rsquo;s innocence. I&rsquo;m guessing statutory rape is where most people will jump off the bus, although probably not everybody: fans&rsquo; childhood memories, especially of championships and of guys who crashed into catchers during All-Star Games, can be powerful. Read the comments on any online story about the controversy and you&rsquo;ll see that Rose, even now, retains a lot of support.</p>
<p>But the many Pete Rose controversies all have something in common: Per Jim Gray, Rose brought them on himself. Not only with the consistent sleaziness, but with a never-ending series of mind-boggling strategic blunders.</p>
<p>When he was first investigated in the late &#39;80s, Rose&rsquo;s decisions, from lying about not betting to agreeing to a lifetime ban, baffled many observers. When he finally confessed, in 2002, his confession stepped on the announcement of the election of that year&rsquo;s Hall of Fame class of Paul Molitor and Dennis Eckersley, likely ruining any good will the confession brought about. Rose&rsquo;s way of showing contrition about gambling was to bitch constantly about how poorly he was treated and do weekly appearances at casinos. And the statutory rape revelation was only made possible because Rose for some reason sued Dowd for defamation&mdash;for having suggested in an interview that Rose&nbsp;had committed statutory rape.</p>
<p>For the past couple of decades, Rose has lived this sort of purgatorial sub-fame, constantly advocating for his own Hall of Fame case while at the same time undermining it. Rose appears to be making his primary living as a professional seller of his own autograph, which raises the question of how much value a Rose signed baseball or jersey could possibly have. A couple of months ago, at a Wells Fargo Center autograph display, I saw a cover of the <i>Sports Illustrated</i> issue with Rose&rsquo;s confession for sale, signed, of course, by Rose himself.</p>
<p>I&rsquo;ve always taken the position that the ideal solution to the Rose conundrum was a compromise: Rose gets Hall of Fame eligibility, and the right to appear and be honored at ballparks, but remains banned from ever managing or working for a team. In recent years, Rose&rsquo;s ban has relaxed&mdash;he&rsquo;s appeared with another of his former teams, the Reds, who gave him a statue. He&rsquo;s allowed, at least for the time being, to make weird, Dada-esque appearances on Fox&rsquo;s MLB studio show.</p>
<p>But obviously, the calculus has changed, and if the door on Rose&rsquo;s Hall of Fame wasn&rsquo;t shut already, it is now. The Pete Rose story is a tragic one in many ways. And now, as has long been the case, Pete has no one to blame but himself.&nbsp;</p>
Stephen Silvertag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/220472017-08-09T05:58:00-04:002017-08-10T16:28:29-04:00Baseball Eclipse<p>As Commonwealths go, I obviously prefer Pennsylvania. Ninety-six percent of my immediate family was born in Western Pennsylvania, and I&rsquo;m planning a return trip to Pittsburgh in two weeks to bear witness to as the Pirates somehow maintain relevancy in the slime bucket that is the NL Central division. In the meantime, to pass the alleged dog days of summer, I headed for another Commonwealth just over an hour from my house in upstate New York.</p>
<p>The plan was to watch the Pirates against San Diego at home, then drive northeast for some NCAA independent summer league baseball in Pittsfield, MA. The Bucs blew a late lead and extra-innings forced me to hit the road listening to the game via the MLB cell phone application. The app feeds are often hampered by delays of up to 90 seconds or more from the live action, so I&rsquo;d had a spoiler victory text from home as I crossed the border into Massachusetts from the vast environs of New York&rsquo;s Columbia County.</p>
<p>Sean Rodriguez, a beloved utilityman from a few seasons ago just traded back to Pittsburgh, hit a walk-off homer in the bottom of the 12<sup>th</sup> for some high-end drama on the North Shore of the Allegheny. A jittery, well-scripted Bucco win prepped me for watching the Pittsfield Suns of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League. They were playing their final game of the 2017 short-season campaign at their western Massachusetts home, the historic Wahconah Park. It was a Sunday night game with fireworks to follow and the team hoping to make the old-school NHL style &ldquo;everyone is in&rdquo; league playoffs. Both Pittsfield and the visiting Worcester Bravehearts were hovering around .500 in the standings of the nine-team circuit. How could you not attend?</p>
<p>The Mets had a minor league affiliate in Pittsfield for a long time so I avoided it like most things New England. With Wilpon&rsquo;s disgusting junior charges no longer in residency, I was clear to visit the tiny ballpark that boasts &ldquo;organized baseball since 1892.&rdquo; Baseball historian Daniel Okrent used <em>Sports Illustrated</em> to claim Wahconah as his local park, and there&rsquo;s plenty of wood slats and corrugated metal to go around. It has that stubborn-angled, utilitarian feel of a park reluctantly renovated by town skinflints. Upon arrival and seeing all the turn-of-the-century plaques and history and what-not, I dubbed Wahconah Park &ldquo;the Dame Darcy of ballparks.&rdquo; Pittsfield, it should be noted, is also the home to one of my favorite living writers: Jessica Willis, whose byline also appeared in the pages of the weekly <em>New York Press</em> back during those same go-go 1990s that brought Dame Darcy, an Idaho-born reverse-Goth, into the cultural foreground of New York City&rsquo;s pre-millennial comix scene.</p>
<p>Oddly enough it was a relief pitcher named Willis who came in for the Worcester Bravehearts to shut the door on a 3-1 win on Sunday night, also giving his squad a share of the FCBL playoff spoils. Justin Willis is out of North Bergen, N.J., and is coming off a shoulder injury from a baserunning collision during his high school days. He&rsquo;s building up his arm strength to meet his four-year commitment to Vanderbilt University. The kid looked great shutting down Pittsfield for five hitless innings, so the Commodores can look forward to a feisty right-hander for their 2018 pitching staff.</p>
<p>Wahconah Park is one of two professionally-used facilities with a home plate facing west. This means a 20-minute &ldquo;sun delay&rdquo; is not unusual as umpires have mercy on the batters as the sun sets beyond the outfield fence. It really is blinding. At 7:15 pm, 10 minutes after the first pitch, third base is invisible to fans staring into the bright orb. Forget left-center unless you want to be blinded for the next three innings. Visiting the Pittsfield Suns is good practice for the upcoming solar eclipse, I suppose, but even the old-school rotund home plate umpire as well as catchers for both teams were equipped with expensive sunglasses for the first few innings. Despite a quality Suns cap giveaway by a local bank, there were several uninitiated types in the front rows who had to do the improvised hand-visor move over their brows to take in the action.</p>
<p>Before the game in charming fashion the lanky righthanded starter for Pittsfield wandered through the stands and greeted some families on his way to the PA booth. He was Gage Feeney from Cutler, Maine, who tosses for the University of Southern Maine and has the perfect name for a strapping fellow from Maine. With his historic baseball surname, he is listed as six-foot-three and is a mechanical engineering major. During the early innings of the game Gage would bark at the home plate ump on balls-and-strikes calls, implore his manager to take up his cause, and face off against University of Maine Black Bear Kevin Doody wearing the luxurious Worcester uniforms with the actual names on the back of the jerseys.</p>
<p>It has been awhile since I have watched a sport live with jersey names on display, I realized, as Doody pulled off a successful sac bunt. Feeney had a 1-0 lead thanks to hard work from Pittsfield&rsquo;s lead-off man, an undersized hometown lad named Kevin Donati who plays his ball at SUNY Albany and was hitting around .360. Feeney had transferred from the University of Maine to the University of Southern Maine in Portland after almost a year in Orono. Following Doody&rsquo;s bunt was a kid from Marist College out of central New Jersey (now you&rsquo;re singin&rsquo; my song) who would tie the score at 1-1 with a gap shot, putting a Poughkeepsie end to all this lobster roll nonsense, at least for a few minutes or so. The FCBL emphasizes the New England population of its rosters, drawing from the widespread collegiate talent base in the region. But it was a Floridian who would bring Feeney&rsquo;s ultimate undoing. Rafael Bournigal, son of the former Major Leaguer of the same name, lashed a double to put Worcester up 3-1, a lead the aforementioned Willis would make stand for the duration.</p>
<p>After Bournigal&rsquo;s double, the staticky PA announcer let the crowd know the Suns had qualified for the playoffs. Light applause from the faithful behind the plate. The fans surrounding me in the fancy seats were witty and charming and quite a mixed bag. A little kid made everyone nervous by swinging a tiny souvenir bat wildly in the aisles during the game. A Roseanne Barr type led a vocal campaign to get the lazy home plate umpire to dust off home plate, for crying out loud. I joined in the heckling. After a few batters, the ump sighed and produced a small brush and dusted off the plinth to great applause from our section. Behind the front rows of box seats are wooden bleacher benches extended up into the corrugated guts of the ballpark. Single-bulb coal mine style lamps dangle above, giving a Max Mercy fedora noir to the setting. Elderly couples were holding hands in the back rows, looking like they were aboard some twisted old roller-coaster with a Victorian industrial theme. If Dr. Who was exploring American baseball, the Tardis would definitely make several stops at Wahconah Park. If there were more hipsters in the front office, a &ldquo;Steam Punk Night&rdquo; would be a given at this ballyard.</p>
<p>In contrast to the Caleb Deschanel art-directed stands behind home plate was the usual anarchic right field general admission &ldquo;picnic area.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s part Wonderland racetrack and part professional rodeo green room. Hay bales are scattered in a redneck amphitheater attempt. Picnic tables are wedged up against very flimsy netting separating the partying hordes from the right field foul line which runs dangerously close. There&rsquo;s a reasonably-priced &ldquo;1892 Grille&rdquo; operation out there, and some chafing dishes in the distance which may or may not be a private event. There are random flea-market style marquee tents erected. There&rsquo;s a &ldquo;bouncy castle&rdquo; in constant shrieking motion deep beyond the right field fence. There&rsquo;s a roughed-up and abandoned Kegerator cowering in a corner, cobwebbed along with a few broken folding chairs and some caved in trashcans. Couples stand hording Bud Light aluminum bottles, their backs to the baseball action. Kids dart in and out of the standing room punters, yelled at for knocking over the stray beer. (&ldquo;Good thing it was empty!&rdquo;)</p>
<p>Typically, the demographic is am oversized married couple with inexplicable avian tattoos on their lower legs in conversation with a recently-divorced guy about how he was scammed by his ex. This are not Northeastern Elites. American Legion shirts ride up above beer bellies, knock-off Red Sox and Tom Brady paraphernalia is rampant, and everyone seems slightly sharped-toothed in this section. The Tanglewood Shed it ain&rsquo;t.</p>
<p>I&rsquo;ve been in many of these sections in my lifetime and never have I seen one like the one at Wahconah Park where no one&mdash;not a single fan&mdash;yells &ldquo;heads up!&rdquo; as a foul ball comes raining down into the crowd. A woman got nailed in the shoulder by random horsehide off the bat of a Worcester player that at least 58 people saw coming, and not one uttered a word of caution in her direction. The New England baseball version of Kitty Genovese? Still sunblinded from the early innings?</p>
<p>If you pay attention, you see pretty good baseball in Pittsfield. A double-play decoy cut down a runner at the plate, a leftfield dove full-out to snare a gapper in front of the ultra-violent Price Chopper hatchet logo that I love so much. Despite just two umpires working the game, the overweight fellows handled run-down plays flawlessly, hustling to cover a far stray base with stoic and unacknowledged professionalism.</p>
<p>The Pittsfield Suns are operated by an aggressive sports marketing outfit called the Goldklang Group. They&rsquo;ve got the Brockton (MA) Rox, also in the Cape Cod League wannabe circuit that is the FCBL, the Fort Myers Miracle (class A reps in the Florida State League for the Minnesota Twins), Hudson Valley Renegades and St. Paul Saints (Independent League). Bill Murray, the Cubs fan and comedic actor, sits on the Goldklang ownership dais. They tend to use the same promotional slogans for each franchise (&ldquo;Be your own fan&rdquo; is one enigmatic entry still employed). &ldquo;Take me out with the crowd&rdquo; is another borrowed line peppering radio promos for the New York-Penn League Hudson Valley Renegades in Fishkill, NY, a class A affiliate of the God-forsaken Tampa Bay Rays. The Renegades are a good 25 minutes closer to my house by car, but after visiting Wahconah Park, I&rsquo;ll take the Pittsfield experience over the generic Fishkill facility any day. With a 1970s sound system, Pittsfield thankfully does not pipe in Top 40 radio interludes during every silence or employ overly cornball sound-effects on foul balls and the like. They have some recorded organ and trumpet calls, but they don&rsquo;t overdo it like most minor league ballparks.</p>
<p>I got a good front-row seat online the night before this game, which had an excellent turnout for baseball at this level. The parking lot is a swamp, but is free. The one hustling &ldquo;operations&rdquo; guy makes sure his concessions stands are stocked and then goes out and sings a pretty darn good version of the National Anthem. I played &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s Okrent?&rdquo; for a while during warm-ups but surrendered after every fifth guy in the good seats under the corrugated roof resembled New England professorial types who value bunting, moving the runners up, hitting the cut-off men, etc. They wore sensible shoes, carried sweaters for later and wore ill-fitting hats from dull resorts as they sheepishly absorbed the half-a-beer liberty issued by their semi-retired librarian wives whom they secretly call &ldquo;the warden.&rdquo; These are the kind of guys who keep $2 bills in their wallets to use as icebreakers with standoffish clerks. They also know better than to attempt viewing a solar eclipse without proper eye protection, so they can live to see another ballgame, such as the Pittsfield nine in the postseason against the Nashua Silver Knights. God bless them all.</p>
Spike Vrushotag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/220062017-08-02T07:00:00-04:002017-08-01T14:15:14-04:00The NFL’s Bleak Future <p>Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman John Urschel&nbsp;is <a href="http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2724133-ravens-ol-john-urschel-retires-after-cte-study-will-pursue-mit-doctorate">retiring</a> from football at the age of 26. While it&#39;s just one young player, there&#39;s a major story behind it. Urschel, who&#39;s also a PhD student in applied mathematics at MIT, decided to quit the sport he loves after the Journal of the American Medical Association published a <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/07/25/539198429/study-cte-found-in-nearly-all-donated-nfl-player-brains">case study</a>&nbsp;showing that a degenerative brain disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) was prevalent in a sample of brains that former football players had donated for research purposes. Urschel said that a concussion he sustained in 2015 hurt his &ldquo;ability to think well mathematically.&quot;</p>
<p>In response, former NFL player Matt Birk tweeted, &ldquo;What about the 15,000 or so deceased former NFL players who lived full lives and didn&rsquo;t have CTE?&rdquo; Birk has a degree from Harvard, but has no evidence that there were no signs of CTE in any of those 15,000 brains. His current role as an advisor to the NFL perhaps induced some motivated reasoning, and it&#39;s just one more sign that the NFL knows this is the single issue that could bring on its demise. One hard fact the league will never be able to escape is that the brain, which gets regularly pounded in its games and practices, doesn&#39;t heal like a knee or a collarbone does.</p>
<p>The NFL&#39;s anxiety is rational, as the CTE study was just the latest piece of bad news connecting football head injuries with serious health consequences. In 2016, the journal <em>Radiology</em> published a <a href="http://www.wakehealth.edu/News-Releases/2016/Brain_Changes_Seen_in_Youth_Football_Players_without_Concussion.htm">study</a>&nbsp;by a professor at Wake Forest School of Medicine that found that a single season of youth football can alter the brains of boys between the ages of 8-13 even if they haven&#39;t had a concussion diagnosis. Studies done at the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/topic/organization/university-of-north-carolina?inline=nyt-org">University of North Carolina</a> and <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/07/26/nfl-concussion-head-trauma-studies-football-timeline">University of Michigan</a>&nbsp;have found links between football and dementia and other symptoms of brain injury. The medical field is in the process of confirming beyond a reasonable doubt what seems obvious&mdash;getting banged on the head repeatedly damages your brain.</p>
<p>The NFL, like the tobacco industry, has long denied the connection between football and long-term neurocognitive conditions. The reality, however, is that the league has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/sports/football/actuarial-reports-in-nfl-concussion-deal-are-released.html">stated</a>&nbsp;in court documents that it expects almost a third of its players to eventually show signs of brain trauma, and at a younger age than among non-football players. Per the 2016 ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, the NFL will be compensating retired players with brain injuries an average of $190,000, but in severe cases it could be up to $5 million.</p>
<p>The NFL may end up paying around $1 billion to injured former players, but it can handle that sum. According to <em>Forbes</em>, the average valuation for a single franchise is $2.3 billion. Due to the religious fervor attached to football in the U.S. and team owners&rsquo; ability to manipulate local municipalities to subsidize them by financing stadiums, owning an NFL franchise is a solid investment, if you&#39;re a billionaire. The real problem the league faces isn&#39;t paying the injured retirees&mdash;it&rsquo;s with the future supply of players it needs to fill its team&rsquo;s 53-man rosters.</p>
<p>The NFL&#39;s talent pool is the approximately three million young players participating in organized tackle football in the nation. Each new football-related brain study depletes this group a little more as the trend of parents keeping their kids away from football continues to accelerate. San Francisco&#39;s Patrick Willis retired at 30, and the Niners also lost budding defensive star Chris Borland at 24 due to his fear of head injuries. Pittsburgh linebacker Jason Worilds walked away from football at 27, right at the time he was eligible for a free agent contract that would&rsquo;ve offered him transformative wealth. Tennessee quarterback Jake Locker quit the game at 26, and Oakland&#39;s Maurice Jones-Drew ended his career at 29.</p>
<p>When you have elite athletes quitting the game they love, along with wealth and fame, trouble&rsquo;s on the way. Try to think of any other line of work where that happens. The NFL will continue to do everything it can to downplay the health issue, but it&rsquo;ll find it increasingly harder to stay ahead of all the scientists who are working now to discover exactly what cumulative hits to the head do to the brain. Arizona Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians <a href="http://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/heat-index/2016/03/24/cardinals-bruce-arians-parents-who-wont-let-kids-play-football-fools/82205580/">said</a>&nbsp;that parents who don&#39;t let their children play football are fools, which makes him a fool himself. Even Iron Mike Ditka, the embodiment of football working class machismo, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/20/mike-ditka-i-wouldnt-let-my-son-play-football/">said</a>&nbsp;that if he had an eight-year-old son today he wouldn&#39;t let him play the game. &ldquo;The risk isn&#39;t worth the reward,&rdquo; he said.</p>
Chris Becktag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/220052017-08-01T09:59:00-04:002017-08-01T10:22:42-04:00Red Sox Nation Deals with Homemade Drama Yet Again <p>ESPN tried to quantitatively evaluate chemistry during their magazine&rsquo;s spring training issue a year ago. They focused on age, experience, and cultural background. Probably kernels of truth among the data. Leadership is hard to quantify in anything. Search &ldquo;leadership&rdquo; and your device will shut down with endless TED talks.</p>
<p>In MLB dynamics, the old fashioned rules (boys&rsquo; code of tribal behavior) have gradually eased up over the years. Clubhouses are separated by language, age, and family status (married? kids?) as well as by tenure with team and personality.</p>
<p>Boston&rsquo;s Dustin Pedroia has been beloved by fans and praised by media for years, but he chooses not to stick around after games and be the voice of the team. The media leave him alone for that because the fans wouldn&#39;t allow the media to criticize him at this point. Recently, he spoke about a June 30th <a href="http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2719200-david-price-dennis-eckersley-get-into-verbal-altercation-on-red-sox-team-flight">incident that occurred on the team plane between starter David Price and NESN commentator Dennis Eckersley</a>. Pedroia finally spoke because the Boston media has continued emphasizing the story. Price clearly acted foolishly and belittled Eck in front of teammates, though it appears it was partially a defensive response to Eck&#39;s criticism of Eduardo Rodriguez&#39; rehab start. Eckersley is often loose with praise and criticism of pitchers. It could be assumed he has a bit of an axe to grind based on his career earnings, but he also gets paid to have colorful, often unfiltered opinions.</p>
<p>Instead of forcing fans to choose a side (Eckersley vs. Price), the nuanced reaction might be that they&rsquo;re both to blame. When Price didn&#39;t publicly apologize for the plane incident, and initially didn&#39;t feel the need to clear the air with Eckersley individually, the embers stayed lit. The noise gets louder. The simmering reputation that Price has developed for not enjoying the Boston media environment becomes an issue and WEEI&#39;s nitwits yell, &quot;Shut up and pitch.&quot; Finally, on Saturday, Price explained he would &ldquo;talk it out&rdquo; with Eckersley, so we can all move on.</p>
<p>Perhaps the biggest reason this story wouldn&rsquo;t go away is the team&rsquo;s age-divide. Other than the newly-acquired Chris Sale and Price and veteran stalwart Pedroia, Boston&rsquo;s lineup fixtures are young, congenial, low-key personalities. Too young to have gained the contract that tends to lead to expectations of leadership among the thirsty media. Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley Jr., and Andrew Benintendi are all waiting for that payday. Hanley Ramirez isn&#39;t interested in that role and hasn&rsquo;t been a Red Sox long enough to be considered.</p>
<p>Baseball clubhouses are boys&rsquo; clubs. Some are more like country bars, others are more like country clubs, and in the biggest markets, they are places where athletes often have to be more careful about their responses, playing the clich&eacute;-ridden game of bro-speak diplomacy. They are exclusive places where &quot;the media&quot; often can become the enemy, or the mosquitoes that must be dealt with before heading home. Not always, as player-reporter relationships can build over time and become amicable, or at least familiar. Free agency, and the power of social media have dramatically tilted the athlete-journalist dynamic. Sites like The Player&#39;s Tribune have removed the need for the athlete to use the reporter in getting his message out. The agent becomes the editor and the desire for brand-building often silences any loud or potentially controversial thoughts. Simply put, the athlete controls the message.</p>
<p>Still, there are times a story&#39;s soap-operatic nature is based on some slim version of reality. Should it have been covered up by the &quot;keep it close the vest&quot; mantra of all exclusive clubs? The epic Red Sox collapse of 2011 left every Sox fan searching for answers. A nine-game September lead ended in arson. So the story went, the fatal collapse and autopsy of the Sox was this: they were swallowed by a fire of burnt fried chicken that was doused out by stale beer. The culprits of this &quot;chicken and beer&quot; narrative were three well-paid and well-established members of the rotation. Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, and John Lackey, as the story goes. The trio regularly ordered fried chicken, drank beer, and played video games while games were being played on the field. One would assume they did this only during the two out of five games in which none of them were starting, though it would be hilarious to imagine Beckett sneaking back to the clubhouse in between innings of his own start, to swig beer and get in a quick game of <em>Call of Duty</em>. The story bubbled up in early October and echoed around New England like a perverse version of the campfire favorite telephone game.</p>
<p>Lester confirmed there was a hint of truth. In mid-October, <a href="http://m.mlb.com/news/article/25692288/">MLB.com ran a story in which Ian Browne quoted Lester</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&quot;It was a ninth-inning rally beer,&quot; Lester said. &ldquo;We probably ordered chicken from Popeye&#39;s like once a month. That happened. But that&#39;s not the reason we lost. Most of the times, it was one beer, a beer. It was like having a Coke in terms of how it affected you. I know how it looks to people and it probably looks bad. But we weren&#39;t up there just drinking and eating and nobody played video games. We watched the game.&quot;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They indeed ate fried chicken and drank beer in the ninth inning. The horror. Boston&rsquo;s collapse was indeed tragic. Leading the AL East for 60 straight games, heading into September, and then bowing out so dreadfully&hellip; it was about as ugly as a season gets. But the collapse was team-wide. Former manager Terry Francona was going through personal issues, and admitted he&rsquo;d had difficulty reaching the players that year. After leading the 2004 Red Sox to their first World Series in 86 years, then following that up with another title in 2007, Francona was rightfully entrenched as manager and savior heading into 2011. Fans were irate when he was unceremoniously dismissed shortly after the season. Red Sox ownership should&rsquo;ve given Francona at least the 2012 season to right the ship.</p>
<p>The 2011 Baseball-Reference team page is <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/BOS/2011.shtml">littered with profane numbers</a>. That team was forced to start Kyle Weiland (7.66 ERA) for five games. Weiland&rsquo;s career spanned 42 MLB innings, 24 of which came in the last two months of 2011. One of today&rsquo;s most dominant relievers, Andrew Miller, had yet to harness his arsenal. Miller was forced into 12 starts (5.54 ERA and 41 walks in 65 innings).</p>
<p>But if you want to find one pitcher from that staff who put together one of the worst seasons in recent history, it would be John Lackey. It&rsquo;s rather difficult to allow 1.6 baserunners per inning and start more than 20 games in a season, but Lackey managed it in 2011. Four years after leading the AL with a 3.01 ERA for the Angels (ERAs were bloated in 2007), Lackey&rsquo;s 28 starts were about as disastrous as one could imagine. He led the AL in hits allowed and hit batsmen. His 6.41 ERA would have signaled the end of many a career.</p>
<p>With even a decent season from Lackey, those Red Sox win a few more games and earn a wild-card berth. Instead, their lead evaporated in September. When it was noted in late October that Lackey would need Tommy John surgery and would miss 2012, it came as something of a relief. Lackey and his repaired elbow boosted the team in 2013. His October success helped push the Red Sox to another World Series title. Lackey&rsquo;s early-career success with the Angels, helping the Angels win the 2002 World Series at age 23, mirrored Beckett&rsquo;s early-career success. Beckett&rsquo;s Marlins won the World Series the following year when he was 23. Beckett ended up with the MVP trophy. In that context, having been granted star status at early ages, and then winding up in Boston a decade later, the leeway they were granted during that 2011 season is interesting. If Lackey&rsquo;s torturous season had occurred prior to the landscape-altering October of 2004, in which the whole region could finally exhale and proclaim the historical suffering of mythological disappointments over, Lackey would&rsquo;ve been berated on a daily basis by the sports media. Instead, he was mildly criticized.</p>
<p>What does this brief history lesson have to do with the 2017 Red Sox? I&rsquo;m not sure. David Price had a very solid year in 2016, even though his first impression was less than stellar, and his October start was uninspiring. His elbow is clearly not 100 percent, and a second DL stint this season is distressing. Many fans in New England (and yes, all over) love to complain about big-money players. Some of the criticism is deserved. Pablo Sandoval&rsquo;s first impression to Red Sox fans was disastrous, and some of that had to do with his conditioning or lack thereof. His contract became an albatross for the team, which all fans who pay attention to roster construction were aware of. Yet it also has to do with a working-class aesthetic that overvalues the underdog and is skeptical of the newly-acquired star. The complaints have gotten louder and more vicious when the athlete doesn&rsquo;t look like those working-class white fans. It isn&rsquo;t as simple as racism, but it has to do with an outsider (free agent) who gets the big money, and doesn&rsquo;t fit the image of the working-class hero for a certain subset of the New England population. The Boston sports media milks these controversies for ratings. It isn&rsquo;t new, but it is tiring.</p>
<p>Will this year end in another minor tragedy, or will their home-grown young core (Betts, Bogaerts, Bradley,&nbsp;Benintendi) emerge from a July swoon and find their groove against the Yankees and Rays over the stretch run? The team&rsquo;s lack of power has become a dominant storyline in the past month, and the added weight seems to have caused several hitters to feel the pressure.</p>
<p>Betts&rsquo; fine first-half has been clouded by ugly post-All-Star-break numbers (three extra-base hits in 78 plate appearances). Bogaerts is clearly attempting to play through an injury. Bradley&rsquo;s 17 post-break games have resulted in three walks, 22 strikeouts, and a dreadful .522 OPS. Lately, Benintendi is looking plainly overmatched, especially against southpaws. On the year, his splits are dramatic (.782 OPS vs. RHP, .566 vs. LHP with two doubles and zero homers). David Ortiz&rsquo; absence has never loomed larger. With tension mounting, GM Dave Dombrowski added utility man Eduardo Nunez, acquired from the Giants less than a week ago. Though not exactly the power threat most envisioned Boston nabbing, Nunez blasted two homers in his second game in a Red Sox uniform. His 18 stolen bases may be especially useful down the stretch in close games.</p>
<p>Chris Sale&rsquo;s Cy Young candidacy grows stronger by the day. As the calendar turns to August, the Red Sox trail the Yankees by a half-game in the division, and lead the wild-card race by a 1.5 games over the Royals, with Tampa threatening to knock either the Red Sox or Royals out of the wild-card slot, four behind the Sox in the loss column.</p>
<p>Of note: Boston is 9-3 in extra innings. Before you get too excited about the October close-game possibilities, remember that means the Red Sox are merely two games over .500 in nine-inning contests. With a bullpen that still ranks third in ERA (3.03, behind only the Dodgers and Indians), the team&#39;s six blown saves in July led to yesterday&rsquo;s trade-deadline acquisition of Mets closer Addison Reed. Over the last two years, Reed is equally dominant against hitters from both sides of the plate. Without an experienced lefty in the pen, Reed&rsquo;s 17 Ks to 1 walk vs. LHB this season will make him the designated out-getter against lefties. Reed, Joe Kelly, and Matt Barnes are a solid triumvirate, bridging the gap from starter to closer Craig Kimbrel.</p>
Jonah Halltag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/219852017-07-27T07:00:00-04:002017-07-26T14:13:25-04:00Tennis’ Enigma: Bernard Tomic<p>Australian tennis player Bernard Tomic is an enigma. After his first-round, straight-sets loss to Mischa Zverev at this year&#39;s Wimbledon, he told the media he was bored and unable to find any motivation at tennis&rsquo; most prestigious event. Nobody at the press conference had to be talked into believing him, as throughout the match it appeared that he&#39;d rather be chilling out in the players&#39; lounge. The Aussie&rsquo;s indifference didn&#39;t go over well with the tennis establishment. Women&rsquo;s tennis legend Martina Navratilova accused him of being &ldquo;disrespectful to the history of the sport,&rdquo; and Australian tennis hero Pat Cash took a&nbsp;shot at his countryman.</p>
<p>But 24-year-old Tomic, nicknamed Tomic the Tank Machine, is not the type of person to be chastened by anyone, no matter who they are. In an <a href="https://youtu.be/xFRcWJ6fP_Q">interview</a>&nbsp;with Australia&rsquo;s Channel Seven on Sunday, he told Melissa Doyle that he&rsquo;s made a career out of giving a 50&nbsp;percent effort. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t really tried and I&rsquo;ve achieved all this,&rdquo; he said. That&#39;s not what Australians want to hear from their sports stars, as Tomic knows. It&#39;s what a spoiled brat who wants to piss people off says. Tomic doesn&#39;t even care if the Aussie fans get tired of watching him tank matches and think twice about buying tickets to see him play. He told Doyle that those people should watch him on TV instead, because he never knows which version of him will show up.</p>
<p>Tomic&rsquo;s one of those guys nobody tells what to do, and that includes the police. A couple of years ago, he threw a wild party at a $7,000-a-night Miami Beach hotel that was so loud security asked him to vacate the premises. When he refused, the police arrived, and the inebriated tennis player told them he wasn&#39;t going anywhere so they <a href="http://www.tmz.com/2015/07/16/tennis-star-bernard-tomic-arrested-in-miami-after-hotel-penthouse-rager">arrested&nbsp;him</a>. The Miami police handcuffed the world&rsquo;s 25th-ranked men&#39;s tennis player that evening, but Tomic&rsquo;s at 73 now. He&rsquo;s talking of playing for another 10 years, but often sounds like he wants to quit tomorrow.</p>
<p>While Tomic hasn&#39;t worked hard, as he admitted on TV, that doesn&#39;t stop him from taunting his critics with his wealth. &ldquo;You probably don&rsquo;t like me but, at only 24, you guys can only dream about having what I have at 24,&rdquo; he told the <i>Sunday</i> <i>Herald Sun.</i> &ldquo;End of the day, don&rsquo;t like me or whatever. Just go back to dreaming about your dream car or house while I go buy them.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Australia&#39;s tennis aristocracy doesn&#39;t know what to make of their petulant, Lamborghini-driving star, who appears to have descended from some other lineage divorced from the proud tennis history of that nation. Embedded in Australian tennis lore is the memory of champions like Rod Laver, John Newcombe, and Ken Rosewall, who always competed hard, no matter how bad the match was going, while maintaining reputations as gentlemanly sportsmen. It&#39;s not even possible to imagine one of them openly boasting about how much money he&rsquo;d made with a half-assed career effort or not even <a href="https://youtu.be/UMaqmdAAw44">pretending to try</a>&nbsp;on the tennis court.</p>
<p>That was back in the Age of Honor when there were codes. It seems quaint in the era of the cult of the superstar, when personal brand is what matters, and allegiance is owed only to the self. In the six years since his Wimbledon shocker, Tomic&rsquo;s gone from <i>wunderkind</i> to question mark. His match record is 9-15 in 2017, and he&#39;s already stated publicly that he couldn&#39;t care less about how well he does at the next Grand Slam, the U.S. Open. He talks like a loser now. The guy who was ranked number 17, and is now at 73, is just going through the motions because this is the job that his overbearing father, John, chose for him years ago and it pays well. In a sense, when he acts out on the tennis court or tells the media he doesn&#39;t like tennis, he&#39;s addressing his dad. He&#39;s saying, &ldquo;This is what you made me, and I&#39;m miserable.&rdquo; The penthouse hotel rooms, the properties around the world, the Italian sports cars&mdash;they seem like vain attempts to fend the demons off now that materialism and world weariness have replaced the bright dreams of the 13-year-old who once <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/tennis/the-next-big-thing/2006/07/11/1152383741588.html">told&nbsp;a reporter</a> he&#39;d be ranked number one by the time he was 18.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Living in these lavish houses, property around the world, it&#39;s my choice,&rdquo; Tomic told Melissa Doyle. &ldquo;I&#39;ve worked for it and I&#39;ve earned it.&rdquo; That&#39;s a lot of hubris. You&rsquo;d never hear Roger Federer talk like this. The path Tomic&rsquo;s on now isn&#39;t sustainable. The meltdown at Wimbledon, where he also feigned an injury, cost him millions when Head withdrew its sponsorship deal. Nike&rsquo;s hanging in there with him, but if he loses that deal much of his guaranteed income will vanish. Tomic&#39;s worth millions, but it could disappear if he can&#39;t pull himself together. Plenty of other elite athletes have made the mistake of spending like the money will never run out. The smug look on Tomic&rsquo;s face won&#39;t be there for long at this pace. The question is, will anyone even care by the time he implodes?</p>
Chris Becktag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/219802017-07-26T05:54:00-04:002017-07-27T07:40:13-04:00I am Brent Musburger<p>If you ever dreamed of being a sportscaster it probably didn&rsquo;t involve color commentary on semi-pro soccer with a two-camera operation streaming on a social media site from a steamy Division 3 press box in Northern New Jersey in July. But that&rsquo;s what we have in this age of wage-free Internet writing that&rsquo;s also morphed into free broadcasting as Fox Sports online writers can surely attest. Fox Sports announced the written word was done on its vast website last week. No more bylines other than &ldquo;Fox Sports.&rdquo; Twenty writers gone. Boom, boom, boom let&rsquo;s go back to my chatroom.</p>
<p>So it was with great pleasure, humility, and gratitude that I boarded a Trailways bus last Saturday afternoon chartered by Kingston Stockade FC, the semipro entry in the National Premier Soccer League (the fourth tier in American soccer), as the team trekked to Madison, NJ to play its regional semifinal playoff game against a squad called Clarkstown SC Eagles. Stockade FC had won its first-ever playoff game at home the weekend before, beating Hartford City FC to become division champions and move on to the next round. I was with another volunteer fan who got me into the Facebook livestream broadcasts at the beginning of Kingston&rsquo;s second full season in the NPSL back in May. Trailways is the kit sponsor for the team, and their terminal in Kingston is right across the avenue from Dietz Stadium, the home ground of Stockade FC which is in turn located in the &ldquo;Stockade&rdquo; historic district of Kingston. The team with the 18<sup>th-</sup>century stone house legacy has tech volunteers who are the envy of the league as almost every Stockade match is streamed live on Facebook.</p>
<p>I&rsquo;ve wanted to live play-by-play or color since I was a kid, and I&rsquo;ve logged so many hours in front of a TV or radio listening to baseball announcers that I can summon every clich&eacute; ever used by any AM radio microphone duo put together from the mid-Atlantic states to the Northeastern Elites territory. Tone. Pitch. Timbre. Pace. Momentum. Anecdotes. Dennis Miller-style pop culture references. Vin Scully-style anecdotes and pauses. The verisimilitude of Milo Hamilton&rsquo;s crowd descriptions. It is all parroting at this point. Through the &ldquo;exposure&rdquo; of a team fanzine my daughter and I have produced since last season, I think they let me stick around the broadcast booth because the distracted tech guys weren&rsquo;t too keen on &ldquo;sports details.&rdquo; I did two Kingston road broadcasts solo this season, one with my daughter operating the iPad camera from the nice pressbox at Central Connecticut State in New Britain, where Hartford City FC of plays its home matches. The most fun was in the rain in downtown Brooklyn, on the cramped LIU athletic field across from Junior&rsquo;s. Old friends were in the house, and Kingston dropped a 1-0 heartbreaker to a club called Brooklyn Italians in stoppage time. The great thing about these livestreams is you can revisit them anytime and check your quality on goal calls or substitutions and any other obscure references that might have sneaked in. Soccer is a different animal than baseball in terms of calling a game. Fewer details and stats are needed. There&rsquo;s more natural build-up as well-coifed players effort their way forward without helmets or other vulcanized encumbrances, rolling that stone up the hill one more time in an attempt to ripple the vast hanging netcord (what ESPN announcer Tommy Smyth refers to as &ldquo;the old onion bag&rdquo;) and celebrate like the opera divas they are.</p>
<p>It was nice of the team to let us netcasters tag along for the ride to Drew University&rsquo;s turf pitch in Madison, squeezed in between the Mall at Short Hills and Fairleigh Dickinson University to the north.</p>
<p>Many of the unpaid players at the NPSL drive themselves to matches, so the team bus wasn&rsquo;t crowded. Some paid support staff was there to make sure practice equipment was loaded and offer energy bars to the soccer personnel on hand. The bus had the leading scorer for Kingston this year, and last season&rsquo;s leading scorer, so the cargo was somewhat precious. Chris, the Trailways driver, made record time in coach 61624 with its unused DVD screens blazing. Wi-Fi aboard meant everyone could quickly retreat into a digital shell with plenty of room to spread out over several seats.</p>
<p>The bus passed abandoned gas stations in Hurley looking chiaroscuro menacing under slate gray late afternoon skies. We passed a quiet Dietz Stadium which whispered encouragement to a team that has revived its WPA bleachers on hot summer nights. We passed the enormous Laibach-style American flags used by car dealers to mark the planet as their own as the New York State Thruway ribbons its way between the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson River southward to the Big Apple bobbing away. There&rsquo;s a stop in New Paltz where more local players and staff board the bus. As we pull back onto the Thruway, a van in front of us is child-molester blank white, slowing down two lanes via driver indecision One bumper sticker reads: THE FEAR OF THE LORD IS THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM. It looks homemade. Few others notice as we speed through the Modena, NY area. The assistant coaches on board are trying to suss out the 80-man roster of tonight&rsquo;s opponent and one of the Stockade FC bench players near me appears to be studying some type of accounting workbook with painful charts and graphs with jagged <em>Wall Street Journal</em>-style graphics on each page. He&rsquo;s soon asleep as we cross the border into New Jersey. Near the Ramapo rest stop, it&rsquo;s apparent from our air-conditioned vehicle that it&rsquo;s still damned hot out when a gaggle of Hells Angels is seen pulled over in the shade on the on-ramp. I look back to the rear of the coach and most of the players are seated in impossible yoga poses with their legs straight up and their feet above the headrest in front of them. I couldn&rsquo;t do that without the help of several orthopedic surgeons.</p>
<p>As the bus passes a Wal-Mart 18-wheeler I think of Tracy Morgan when I see the sticker on the side of the cab that reads &ldquo;Wal-Mart Transportation: 500,000 Safe Miles.&rdquo; Traffic is unbelievably light as we scream through the I-80 interchange so I think the Kingston team might be blessed in that regard as we head toward a university famous for its theological program.<br />
In fact, the team was so early on arrival at Drew University that the locker rooms were not open yet with nary a janitor in sight. No sign of the opponent. Kingston finished mid-table last season and did not make the playoffs. As mid-July arrived and with a rousing first-round playoff win, the team was flying high into this second round, with a trip to the regional finals in the balance and an automatic bid for the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup tournament next year.</p>
<p>After hitting Poor Herbie&rsquo;s Pub&nbsp;in Madison for pre-game Harp lagers on draft, I was ready to call this one with my partner Steve Patch, who has great knowledge of the technical aspects of soccer. We&rsquo;re a good fit, I think, if only they would turn up our microphones over the crowd noise created by some 240 visiting Kingston road supporters with drums, cowbells and in full voice. Oddly, they are louder on the road than they&rsquo;ve ever been back in Kingston.</p>
<p>The game went by in the usual blur of adrenaline. There is tremendous pleasure in verbally enhancing the tidal rise and fall of a soccer match. Sometimes it&rsquo;s hockey on Quaaludes. Calling a game requires multiple scrap paper rosters and number prompts. It&rsquo;s fun to connect a pass correctly, or have a bit of background on a player who is taking his time with a throw-in. Kingston was up 2-1 at the half and the crowd was jacked. Steve and I had it down and were getting good feedback from the Facebook live comment stream. It was almost too good to be true. I interviewed wunderkind team owner Dennis Crowley at halftime, a media-savvy tech giant who has reaped tons of publicity via his Stockade marketing moves. He&rsquo;s the most earnest sports franchise owner I&rsquo;ve ever met, and his integrity is contagious. We tried not to jinx the second half, then the Clarkstown team came out full of&nbsp;Red Bull and outran their opponents and eventually took the game 6-3. Meanwhile, the Kingston crowd kept singing and drumming well beyond the final whistle, which had a Grinch-style effect on the &ldquo;home team.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Kingston was Whoville and the Clarkstown 11 were realizing that the soccer heart kept beating even after you stole their presents and eliminated them from the holiday playoffs. Stockade FC had taken over a road ground in the precious soccer territory of north Jersey, and they posed with the massive crowd for a well-publicized photo that struck awe in the 28 or so locals who turned out to support Clarkstown. Their home was supposed to be Rockland County, but the Eagles played all their home games in three different north Jersey locations as they plan to relocate to Morristown next year but a paperwork snafu cost them dearly this season. When Christopher Katona put Clarkstown up 5-2 late in the game, he mocked the Kingston fans and drummers in a courageous but fruitless strut in front of the lively visitors. The barnstorming Clarkstown team obviously longed for similar passion from their own supporters, and I told the Facebook viewers &ldquo;This is what happens when you don&rsquo;t have a home ground. You will always play in front of strangers.&rdquo;</p>
<p>At that point the press box at Drew University was an absolute steam bath. There were a few stray cans of some IPA and a horrible glare off the glass from the fluorescents blaring above us in the booth. But we soldiered on until the final whistle when Kingston&rsquo;s improbably fantastic sophomore season concluded. Things got emotional. Sad ending, but heads held high&mdash;that kind of thing.<br />
On the way home, from the windows of the comfy Trailways coach and with the cameraman running out of Yuengling cans, the Morristown Mini dealer and Friendly&rsquo;s restaurant further mocked us as we fled the Garden State for the glorious Hudson Valley. The players on the bus shook hands with everyone as they departed. The Brazilian guy with his Speed Racer looks was talking about a hot date on Tuesday, the team captain, who scored in stoppage time as a defenseman coming forward in the final seconds, was extremely sincere in his thanks as he stepped off at the New Paltz stop. He was captain last season, returned this season, and I hope he comes back as captain next season. But at this level, you never know who&rsquo;s going to emerge or depart from year to year. Bruce Jeter, a Marist College player who made the Stockade squad for the summer, is reportedly a distant cousin of the old Yankee captain.</p>
<p>The players, fit as they are, were off to run marathons, do rail-trail bike runs and work on their six-pack abs. Patch and I, the Internet media sloths, were off to Rhinebeck for late beers and food. David Lindholm, the new coach of the Stockade this season, sought me out for a handshake in the parking lot. He had a refreshingly simple approach to the game. Lindholm was an assistant mentored by Bard College soccer coach Andy McCabe, a friend whom I met in those same Rhinebeck bars and eulogized on this website (&ldquo;<a href="http://www.splicetoday.com/sports/requiem-for-a-soccer-coach">Requiem for a Soccer Coach</a>&rdquo;)&nbsp;in April of last year after his untimely passing. Andy would&rsquo;ve enjoyed David&rsquo;s run with this colorful squad, a team that rejoiced on the bus when they got social media word that Trailways had a fan bus sold out for this road game and they were gaining ground on us bound for the playoff game. Fifty-two souls: kids, parents, grandparents, bound for the bowels of New Jersey where they took over the joint and, despite the loss, showed them how it is done when it comes to supporting a team.</p>
Spike Vrushotag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/219572017-07-20T10:00:00-04:002017-07-20T10:45:07-04:00QB Michael Vick Tells QB Colin Kaepernick to Cut His Hair<p>Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick is looking for a new job. Unable to replicate his early success in the NFL, he can&rsquo;t find a new gig lining behind the center. Some will tell you it&#39;s purely performance-based, while others are certain the NFL is blackballing him for his refusal to stand for the national anthem during games last season.</p>
<p>Former NFL quarterback Michael Vick, who doesn&#39;t think Kaepernick&#39;s being blackballed, was a guest on Fox Sports 1&#39;s <em>Speak for Yourself</em>&nbsp;on Monday, and said that the ex-49er should &quot;cut his hair&quot; and &quot;just try to be presentable.&quot; Then came the outrage, because the only politically correct stance on Kap is that the racist NFL (which fields 70 percent black players) is punishing him for standing up for minorities beset by the police. Nobody knows the real reason why no team has signed him, but when looking for a job appearances generally do count for something. Vick&rsquo;s comments were hardly offensive. Tom Brady could probably walk into an NFL interview with dreadlocks, board shorts, and flip-flops and still have a contract placed in front of him, but Colin Kaepernick&rsquo;s no Tom Brady.</p>
<p>Former NFL star Shannon Sharpe blasted Vick on his FS1 show. &ldquo;What Michael Vick just did was continually perpetuate a stereotype that black men look a certain way, dressed a certain way, should be judged a certain way,&rdquo; said the former standout at tight end. Kaepernick, wisely silent on his hiring controversy, responded by posting on Twitter this definition of the Stockholm Syndrome: &quot;When an abused victim, develops a kind of respect and empathy towards their abuser.&quot;</p>
<p>What Sharpe and Kaepernick were suggesting is that Vick is an Uncle Tom. The ex-jailbird Vick will be forever tainted by the fact that he murdered dogs, while Kaepernick is one of the most admirable people in the NFL. He&#39;s never had an off-the-field controversy, he stands up for what he believes in, and donates large sums to charities. Unfortunately, that counts for nothing in NFL front offices. If the NFL blackballs players, then why did a pariah like Vick get a second chance in the league after serving his time? It&rsquo;s because teams thought he&rsquo;d help them win and were willing to endure the criticism that would be part of the bargain. If NFL teams coveted Kaepernick like they once did Vick, Kaepernick would have had multiple job offers by now, even if he tried to look even more like a Black Panther and wore his <a href="http://i.imgur.com/AOZyC2p.jpg">Castro and Malcolm X t-shirts</a>&nbsp;every day.</p>
<p>Kaepernick, by bringing up the Stockholm Syndrome, suggested that Michael Vick is an abused victim, but who abused him? He made millions in the NFL after coming out of a rough neighborhood in Newport News, Virginia. The league welcomed him back into the fold after a major transgression. He&rsquo;s not a victim. He&#39;s just offering an opinion that&rsquo;s not too popular among the many who are sure they understand this situation.</p>
<p>Social justice warriors <i>never</i> risk anything for their cause. Kaepernick&rsquo;s not like those dilettantes though. He&#39;s willing to take real risks. Like or dislike what he did with his pre-game protests, what he did took courage. How he wears his hair is his own business. He&#39;s obviously not going to cut it, and it&#39;s doubtful it has anything to do with his current unemployed state. However, the people going off on Michael Vick and saying he&#39;s an appeaser should get a grip. His tonsorial advice was poorly thought-out, but his real sin was to say what&#39;s not allowed to be said: that Kaepernick&#39;s sub-par performance over the past few seasons is the real reason he&#39;s still waiting for the phone to ring.</p>
Chris Becktag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/219372017-07-17T07:02:00-04:002017-07-20T08:59:23-04:00Wimbledon: The Roger Federer Show<p>As the end of this year&#39;s Wimbledon tennis championship came into sight, a number of the game&rsquo;s elite were missing in action on the men&rsquo;s side. The upsets started in the very first round, with world number three Swiss star Stan Wawrinka losing to 49th-ranked Daniil Medvedev. Fourth-seeded Rafael Nadal, two-time Wimbledon champ, lost a five-set thriller round of 16 match to Luxembourg&rsquo;s Gilles Muller that concluded with a 15-13 fifth set. World number two Novak Djokovic failed to get out of the quarterfinals after withdrawing with an elbow injury in the second set of his match against Tomas Berdych. Then, all of Great Britain gasped when their favorite son&mdash;world number one and defending Wimbledon champion Andy Murray&mdash;fell to 24th seeded American Sam Querrey in a five-set semifinal match.</p>
<p>On the women&#39;s side, the big story was that 37-year-old Venus Williams, with five Wimbledon singles titles, sailed through to the finals in fine form. Up against hard-hitting Spaniard Garbi&ntilde;e Muguruza, who entered Wimbledon with a number 15 ranking, the first set was a tense 7-5 affair that saw Venus competing strongly until coming up a little short at the end. Inexplicably, for a player of her stature, she then failed to win another game in the match. Watching a great champion defeated like that was disconcerting. The TV tennis commentators struggled, and failed, to make sense of it. Maybe Muguruza is just too good for someone who&rsquo;s been on the women&#39;s tour since 1994. That&#39;s certainly how it looked, but Venus deserves much credit for making it to the finals of a major tournament at her age.</p>
<p>Among those amazed that tennis deity Roger Federer was still standing amidst all the carnage you&#39;d have to include prominent ESPN commentator Michael Wilbon, who demonstrated his tennis acuity way back in 2008 when he said the graceful Swiss champion was &ldquo;done winning majors.&rdquo; Federer, looking like he was giving master classes in how to win on grass, arrived at the finals for the 11th time without dropping a set, although his three-set semifinal victory over Berdych (7-6, 7-6, 6-4) was, in the end, decided by only a handful of points.</p>
<p>Wimbledon overachiever Querrey (he eliminated Djokovic last year) reached the end of his quixotic journey to play a match for a Grand Slam title when he met up with the equally lanky Marin Cilic. The Croatian world number six player, who&rsquo;s won more tournaments on grass than any other player on tour this year, handled the American in four sets and punched his ticket to face the most successful male tennis player of all time in the finals. One storyline here is that the Croat upset Federer (6-3, 6-4, 6-4, in under two hours) in the semifinals of the 2014 U.S. Open, which he went on to win for his only major championship. With his grass-court game peaking at the right time, it appeared that he had at least a chance of taking major title number two against the 35-year-old Swiss legend.</p>
<p>It was not to be, however, and it didn&#39;t take too long to sense it. The 28-year-old contender&#39;s big first serve wasn&#39;t going in and the rest of his game followed suit. Federer becomes too strong once he gets a leg up on his opponent, so Cilic needed to strike early. When Federer broke his serve to go up 3-2 in the first set, the chances for an upset were quickly fading. The second set provided the sort of drama rarely seen in men&#39;s tennis, but unfortunately it was on the sideline. Cilic, while being attended to for a blister on his left foot that severely limited his mobility, broke down and began to weep. It wasn&#39;t his foot or the fact that he was losing. It was the emotional pain of realizing that he was not going to be physically able to compete for his dream title. Piers Morgan, exhibiting his standard sub-par level of cognition, <a href="https://twitter.com/piersmorgan/status/886587763247677440">tweeted</a>: &ldquo; Get a grip, Cilic. You don&#39;t sob like a baby because you&#39;re losing. That&#39;s pathetic.&quot;</p>
<p>Still, Cilic soldiered on. Retiring from a Wimbledon final is not something any player wants on their resume. When he dropped the second set 6-1, it&#39;s doubtful even his team members thought he stood a chance. Federer finished him off with an ace in the third set, winning his record eighth Wimbledon 6-3, 6-1, 6-4.</p>
<p>Soon to turn 36, Federer appears poised to add several more Grand Slam titles to the unprecedented 19 he already holds. He emerged from his six-month tennis hiatus last year with a new game that looked much like his old one. Michael Wilbon was far from the only one who wrote him off years ago, but now it&#39;s looking like Federer will finish the year ranked number one. The only other player who stands a chance is Nadal.</p>
<p>Federer also cried on the final Sunday at Wimbledon. Sitting on the sidelines after his victory, he let the tears flow. During his victory speech, he was deferential to his vanquished, damaged opponent. Such grace is one reason his opponents find it hard to motivate themselves by ginning up some animosity towards him. When you make it through Wimbledon without losing even one set (the last player to do it was Bjorn Borg in 1976) you start to look invincible.</p>
Chris Becktag:www.splicetoday.com,2005:Post/219172017-07-11T10:30:00-04:002017-07-11T10:45:51-04:00Baseball Fakery Abroad<p>Now that we&rsquo;ve suffered through yet another All-Star Home Run Derby with the Aaron Judge Longball Vaudeville down in Miami, it should be known that there was a Shawn Green sighting. Yes, the former Mets slugger and Dodgers star who wrote a book about Zen in the batter&rsquo;s box called <em>The Way of Baseball</em>. Yes, the guy who used to give away his batting gloves to a kid in the stands after each home run.</p>
<p>He was not in Miami, though. Some nerds might remember he did appear in the All-Star Home Run Derby in Boston in 1999 when he hit exactly two over the Fenway fences. This time, though, Green was with another former Met, Cliff Floyd, and famous Scott Boras client Carlos Pena at a tacky MLB event in London&rsquo;s Hyde Park on the Fourth of July. They were wearing knock-off Dodgers and Red Sox uniforms as they led two teams into a home run derby called &ldquo;MLB Battlegrounds.&rdquo; It was an official MLB International event and it had a <em>Stepford Wives</em> style crowd, many of whom seemed to be the same people MTV would hire to stand up front and be &ldquo;enthusiastic&rdquo; at the bygone Video Music Awards shows at Radio City.</p>
<p>A sampling of ex-pats did linger on the Fourth in the dusty park that&rsquo;s now home to a seasonal parade of major pop concerts. Some of these shows, like the recent Green Day performance, inexplicably draw crowds of 65,000. A somewhat lengthy trek into Hyde Park&rsquo;s interior rewards visitors with mini-strip mall food-courts and pop-up pubs, an outdoor cinema, and a few carnival rides. The MLB Battleground took place from one of the larger elevated stages, with gigantic inflatable &ldquo;targets&rdquo; worth points in the competition mangling the sightlines for anyone wishing to view the batters. An over-enthusiastic PA announcer hyped each swing by Pena and his retired buddies who were also joined by a few aging cricket stars, a few softball legends and a couple of failed European baseball players who might&rsquo;ve made some noise in the minors 10 years ago. Pena was the most sought-after autograph up front, especially by the three people who remember the former first-round pick of the Texas Rangers who hit five homers in the All-Star Home Run Derby in 2009 at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.</p>
<p>Pena was somewhat aloof in his comments to the sideline reporters, unlike Floyd who was by far the most enthusiastic of the participants. The last time I saw Cliff in person he was screaming in absolute agony into the night sky at a lonely Shea Stadium. It was a Monday game in May of 1995 with about 13,000 in attendance on the fringes of LaGuardia Airport. Floyd was the Expos first baseman who reached for a straying throw on an infield squib. Mets lummox Todd Hundley was barreling down the first base line and collided with Floyd&rsquo;s reach. The result was the fracture<em> and</em> dislocation of the wrist on his glove hand. The injury required four surgeries and almost ended his career. I had never heard a pro athlete howling in pain prior to that odd visit to Shea. I remember hearing Willie Randolph&rsquo;s wrist bone break on a pitch from Bob Walk a few years earlier, but the Floyd screams were absolutely Munchian in comparison.</p>
<p>Back in the crowd I saw some pasty fellows sporting San Francisco Giants caps and Dodgers t-shirts. I had to step forward. &ldquo;I just bought the hat,&rdquo; said one guy. &ldquo;He is the Dodgers fan,&rdquo; he said pointing to his bearded millennial pal. Neither would elaborate as to the nature of their fandom or team loyalty. &ldquo;Your Giants-Dodgers mix is the equivalent of me wearing a Chelsea jersey with a Tottenham scarf,&rdquo; I said, citing a London soccer rivalry that equals the time-honored Dodgers-Giants angst. With that they shrugged and walked away in the direction of a boozy crowd behind a sound tower hoping for home run balls. The awkward angles of the stage, seating and penned off &ldquo;fan&rdquo; areas made the event somewhat treacherous. Line drives off Green&rsquo;s bat would suddenly tear into a section of people with their backs to the action. Grown men wrestled for baseballs with the aplomb of life-raft crashers from the Titanic. The Brits lost all decorum whenever a stray baseball appeared. As the horsehide continued to scream into a rapidly drunken crowd, there was nary an ambulance in sight. Thankfully, I saw no blood as I meandered the park at sunset with my family, joined by many other folks who were no doubt being counted as &ldquo;attendance&rdquo; for this gratis farce event when in fact they were just innocently passing through the park.</p>
<p>The dismal coverage in the next day&rsquo;s London newspapers acknowledged that MLB is &ldquo;far behind&rdquo; in efforts to have regular season games played in the English capital. The NBA, NFL and NHL have been using Limeyland as a public relations and marketing opportunity for many years. The fact that London papers call their sports sections &ldquo;Sport&rdquo; (so appropriately singular) indicates the culture which will welcome American baseball with the same enthusiasm reserved for diabetes and obesity, the two other great American exports. The papers and TV coverage were instead chock full of early-round Wimbledon tennis, a national team cricket test match against South Africa, and a national team rugby square off in New Zealand against the always-formidable All Blacks, Tour de France bicycle racing and the Premier League soccer transfer window featuring Wayne Rooney&rsquo;s inevitable return to Everton and the familiar prostitutes of his youth. Good luck, Shawn Green!</p>
<p>One prominent cricket fan I&rsquo;m acquainted with in London is playwright Tom Stoppard. He held his 80<sup>th</sup> birthday party in the Chelsea Physic Garden the day I arrived which was several days before nascent England captain Joe Root would lead the national side against South Africa at Lords. Jet lagged and full of Pimm&rsquo;s, it was the type of party where a hoi polloi outsider can observe details that might come in handy someday. Sir Bob Geldof, one of three cap-wearing fellows at the party, commended me for wearing my Fred Perry lid &ldquo;the right way,&rdquo; meaning forward. &ldquo;When I was in New York sometimes I would see guys with the hats on backwards and I would stop them and whisper to them they had it on wrong,&rdquo; Geldof said before I could request my money back for the Boomtown Rats crappy fourth album <em>Mondo Bongo</em>, which I paid a shitload of money for as an import in Columbus, Ohio, back in 1981.</p>
<p>Geldof was standing in front of the statue of Sir Hans Sloane, who was gesturing toward actress Maggie Smith sitting at a table eating watermelon and wearing Skechers on her feet. I looked at her and she was ogling Rupert Murdoch, standing near a fence in a Pablo Picasso-style striped shirt and blazer get-up, well-tanned and obviously dressed by his latest wife Jerry Hall, who was seated on a bench to his left and was greeting her ex Mick Jagger, who was wearing a black baseball cap with nothing on it, also in the Geldof-approved bill-to-the-front fashion. Behind them, a stilt-walker approached on a garden path walking a tall poodle.</p>
Spike Vrusho